Wounds heal, sad memories remain for Mal Waterhouse

FLASHBACK: Ballarat residents woke on Saturday August 3, 1974, to front page news of the grisly crime that had been committed.It was school rush hour and a man brandishing a knife in a suburban Ballarat street was screaming that he was going to kill his three children. At 8.50am on August 2, 1974, the emergency call came through to police.Sergeant Mal Waterhouse was on his way to the Beaufort Courthouse to prosecute traffic matters but, on receiving the call, changed plans and responded immediately. Alone and unarmed he arrived at the Chamberlain St address. Almost 35 years later the memories of the day remain seared in his mind. With a voice shaky from Parkinson's disease Mr Waterhouse's eyes glaze over as he remembers the events unfolding.Laying in the middle of the road was the body of an eight-year-old boy with a knife in his chest.Sgt Waterhouse couldn't help but think of his own son as he briefly cradled the child in his arms and checked his pulse before following the sound of screaming from up the road. The boy's father was trying to kick in the back door of a neighbour's house where his two other children had sought refuge. "I enticed him away to his own house," Mr Waterhouse said."He was quite mentally disturbed. He wanted to kill me because I wanted to stop him killing his other two children."Another policeman, Detective Senior Constable Ronald Ritchie, arrived on the scene and joined Sgt Waterhouse outside the family's home. Inside, the man's wife was lying on the kitchen floor also stabbed to death. The policemen tried to disarm the man but he proved too strong. Mr Waterhouse said the man lunged at both of them numerous times with a 15-inch knife but they were unable to restrain him. "He was so powerful we couldn't hurt him and he said he wanted to hurt us," he said."It felt like it was going for eternity, but it was probably 12 minutes."Both policemen were stabbed in the abdomen and the man fled. He was later apprehended in Warrenheip after being shot in the leg by police. After the inquest into his son's and wife's deaths the man hanged himself in jail. For Mr Waterhouse, the emergency call that morning changed his life. He was in and out of hospital several times and forced to take time out from the police force because of his injuries. It also made him a staunch defender of the right of police to defend themselves.Following the shooting of 15-year-old Tyler Cassidy by three police officers in Melbourne last year, Mr Waterhouse felt compelled to tell his own story. "I'm highly critical of people sitting in armchairs criticising, when they have never been confronted with a situation like that," he said. In a letter to The Courier he wrote that police officers never knew what they would face when they left their homes and families to go to work. "That tragedy, together with the severity of my own wound and the lives lost, is for me proof positive that a knife-wielding person, most likely suffering the consequences of life's many pressures, is capable of actions way beyond that person's normal behaviour," he wrote"I consider myself one of the lucky ones as I have continued on from that incident to lead a sometimes difficult but rewarding life."But the memories still remain. Sitting at home surrounded by family photos and police memorabilia, Mr Waterhouse said his mind continued to wander back to that morning periodically and wonder in hindsight what he could have done. When asked about the effect the stabbing had on him, Mr Waterhouse places his hand on his chin and thinks carefully before replying: "I think it made me value life more,' he said."How sweet life is and know that you make one mistake and you're dead."