A Dublin-born GP, who has been recognised for bravery for wrestling an axe-wielding man who was trying to kill his colleague three years ago, said everything moved “very slowly” during the attack.

Dr Fergus McCabe received an award for intervening when a man attacked his colleague with an axe in Perth, Australia, in September 2023.

He has been recognised for the act of bravery by Australian Governor General Sam Mostyn.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with David McCullagh, Dr McCabe said: “So I was sitting upstairs in my apartment. My room is upstairs in the second building. I was just finishing with one patient, and I was just about to see my second patient.”

He said that was when he heard a “very shrill scream from downstairs”.

“Initially you don’t think that somebody is attacking somebody. My mind went to, first, was that one of my colleagues needed help dealing with a distressed patient,” he said.

After leaving his room to go down and help, he “realised that it was something much worse”.

“I recognised the voice, I recognised the terror in the scream, so I started to run,” he said.

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He said it was not just him, that everybody reacted “properly”.

While running down the stairs, the 18-year-old receptionist was on her way to help.

“I had to tell her to go back,” he said.

He said the clinic was empty as the receptionist downstairs had managed to get everyone out.

The receptionist had a part-time job on 999 calls and so knew the code to use for an armed attack so “he got a rapid response really quickly”.

He said the attacker had stalked his colleague, a female doctor named Anna, for a number of years.

Dr McCabe said the attacker went into their main building with a metre-long tree-felling axe and went into the reception area looking for his colleague’s name on the doors.

He said the man walked into Anna’s consulting room and “struck her viciously” with the axe, he recalled.

When Dr McCabe arrived, the door was open and he could see the man with the axe, his colleague Anna and a patient in the room.

“I came in, charging in, a pregnant woman was grappling with him and bravely fighting with him to protect Anna.

“Anna was lying on the ground, bleeding and in distress but also fiercely fighting with her feet to protect herself from him and he was going at her again with the axe.

“Luckily … it was our smallest room … I was able to grab the axe, pull the patient out and scream ‘go’… and throw him across the room and stand between him and Anna,” he said.

He said his response to trauma for everything makes life go “very slow”. He said he was on autopilot.

He said: “I’m covered in blood, I must have been grappling with him, but I don’t remember it …”

The GP said his next thought was to get Anna out of the room and to get her help.

After that police arrived and “courageously” secured the attacker and “took control of the scene”.

He said Anna had a blunt force trauma and had to have surgery as a result of her injuries.