Anzac assault

By Kath Gannaway
A 65-YEAR-OLD Coldstream man is to undergo surgery on his shattered jaw tomorrow (Wednesday) after he was attacked while he was on his way to an Anzac Day dawn service.
Police hunting his attackers have described them as callous and calculating.
Ian Carr was punched by one of two attackers as he made his way to the dawn service at Lilydale.
The attack happened at about 5.40am in Clarke Street, just 30 metres from where SES volunteers were setting up barricades.
Nursing a swollen and sore face, Mr Carr told the Mail on Sunday he was walking on the footpath in the dark when two men approached him and asked for a cigarette lighter.
When he told them he wasn’t a smoker the bigger of the two punched him in the face knocking him to the ground.
“I was down on the ground and they were demanding my mobile phone, which I didn’t have on me,” said Mr Carr whose father and uncle served in WWII.
“I was lucky not to be knocked unconscious; I was able to get up on all fours and crawl between two cars as they were trying to grab me and pull me back.”
The men eventually ran off and he was able to make his way to the SES barricade to get help.
“It was frightening because these two… thugs, you’d have to call them, just appeared, one a big fellow and the other a weed of a fellow.
“It’s not the sort of thing I was expecting at that time of morning,” he said.
Detective Senior Constable Damien Morrissey of Lilydale CIU said Mr Carr had done well to get away from his attackers.
“He had the presence of mind to crawl between the cars, despite his age, and get up and run which probably saved him from further injury,” he said.
What Mr Carr and his wife Lyn had planned as a reflective, uneventful day was spent at Maroondah and other hospitals being treated and making arrangements for surgery to repair the “hinge” at the top of the jaw.
DSC Morrissey said police had received numerous calls over the weekend following a television report on the incident.
A call on Monday morning from a man who had been involved in a verbal confrontation in Clarke Street with two men within a minute or so of Mr Carr’s attack, provided a further lead.
The man told police one of the men was about 20, solidly built, with a closely shaved head and wearing a hooded windcheater with a motive on it.
The other man, he said, was about the same height but skinny.
An earlier description described the second man as having dark blonde, spiked hair.
Both men were wearing jeans.
DSC Morrissey said the men were callous and calculating and had targeted Mr Carr because he was an older man walking alone.
“There would have been 50 or 60 people walking up Clarke Street at around the time of the attack and someone else must have seen these guys,” he said.
Anyone with information is asked to contact DSC Morrissey at Lilydale on 9735 1684 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.