Friendships forged in moment’s bravery

They are a disparate band of strangers with an enduring friend­ship born from an act of collectiv­e, spontaneous bravery involving the use of a milk crate.

‘Milk Crate Man’ Jase Shore who helped tackle and apprehend an allged terrorist with a milk crate. Picture: Roy Van Der Vegt

They are a disparate band of strangers with an enduring friend­ship born from an act of collectiv­e, spontaneous bravery involving the use of a milk crate, cafe chairs and their own bare hands to overpower a man who admitted this week to being a killer.

They also kind of wish they had never met, born as their friendship was from an act of murder which claimed the life of 24-year-old Michaela Dunn, who had her throat cut at a Sydney city apartment before her knife-wielding assailant ran down King Street in a balaclava, stabbing a random passer-by and threatening to harm others.

The men who stopped the murderous Mert Ney in his tracks gathered for a beer on August 17, the first anniversary of the attack, at Sydney’s CBD Hotel, the scene of his crimes on King Street.

Mert Ney trapped with a chair and the crate. Picture: Seven News

Aside from paying tribute to Dunn, the men reflected on the manner in which they had been thrust into the global spotlight after literally taking a very serious matter into their own hands.

The group who overpowered Ney included a lawyer, Sydney solicitor John Bamford, who belted him with a chair; a banker, Westpac IT manager Jamie Ing­ram, who also hit Ney with a chair and knocked the knife from his hand; three tourists visiting from Manchester; two local firemen; and, most famously of all, Coca-Cola Amatil executive and ex-soldie­r Jase Shore, dubbed “the milk crate guy” after he pinned Ney’s head to the bitumen like a trapped rat.

“The whole thing is still hard to process,” Mr Shore told The Weekend Australian. “One minute I was walking down the street and next thing I knew it was on. I suppose that, with my military training, instinct just kicked in. I grabbed the milk crate thinking it would be a good way to incapacitate him and just pinned his head to the ground while the other guys all went to work too.

“I am not a big Twitter person or anything but it was pretty bizarre­ how within hours of it happening there were internet memes of milk crates and pictures of me as ‘Milk Crate Man’ being sent all over the world.

Ney mid-rampage with a knife in hand. Picture: Seven News

“Part of me struggled with that for fear it was making light of it and causing further distress to Michaela’s family, but I suppose that it’s a darkly comical way for people to process horrible events like this.”

Mr Shore now enjoys a quiet life working in a gin distillery in the Adelaide Hills and is engaged to be married. Previously he was a soldier with the Australian Defence Force who served in Baghdad during the war in Iraq.

On the day he confronted Ney, he just wandered back into the Sydney crowd afterwards and went about his business. It was only later, as a result of the massive police investigation, that he and the other men who attacked Ney got to know each other, and have remained in touch.

He said the decision to get together at the same spot for a quiet beer on the first anniversary was aimed at sharing stories and honouring the memory of Dunn.

“It is obviously something that we all wish never happened of that poor girl and her family, but it means something that Mert pleaded guilty this week,” Mr Shore said.

“Too often you hear about cases where people are claiming insanity or some other factor that supposedly justifies or excuses their behaviour, and the courts often swallow it, but the fact that he has pleaded guilty is good. It draws a line under things.”

Mr Ingram shares that same sense of relief at the guilty plea and says the sentencing of Ney, scheduled for December, will be an important final moment, ­especially for the Dunn family.

Along with Mr Bamford, Mr Ingram was one of the first to realise­ Ney was causing trouble when he saw him on Clarence Street, and grabbed a chair from the Bistro Papillon cafe to ghost Ney as he headed along King Street, eventually smashing him with it and knocking the murder weapon out of his hand.

Paul Walker, left, Gonzalo Herrara, Andrew Denny, Mike Apples, Luke O’Shaughnessy, Jase Shore and Jamie Ingram who were responsible for subduing Ney after he killed a woman and seriously injured another in Sydney's CBD in August, 2019.

“I’ve been asked at what point I decided to get involved,” he said. “I don’t think there was a conscious point where any of us got involved. We just got involved. The universe put us all together to do something at the right time.”