A man has been charged after allegedly assaulting a 10-year-old boy and stabbing the child’s mother with scissors outside Victoria Police headquarters in Melbourne.
Police allege the man, a 27-year-old who lives in Sunshine West, punched the boy near the intersection of Spencer Street and La Trobe Street in Docklands at about 1pm on Tuesday.
The boy’s mother, a 46-year-old woman from Cowes, intervened and was allegedly stabbed repeatedly in the upper body before hero bystanders ran in and stopped the alleged attacker.
Footage shared on social media shows members of the public making a citizens’ arrest before police rushed over moments later, and a photo shows an African man being arrested at the scene.
Police seized a pair of scissors, and the mother and son were taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
A big thanks to the guys citizen arresting the man.
The coppers didn’t take too long to arrive for the obvious reason. pic.twitter.com/PiQ8Db8RMz— junnie0618 (@junnie0618) August 25, 2026
Melbourne Crime Investigation Unit detectives later charged the Sunshine West man with affray, two counts each of intentionally cause injury and unlawful assault, conduct endanger life and conduct endanger serious injury.
The man, who was known to police in Victoria, NSW and Western Australia, was refused police bail and will appear in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday. He was not on bail at the time of the alleged attack.
“It’s heroic,” Superintendent Zorka Dunstan said the citizens’ arrest was “heroic” and that bystanders jumped on the man’s back after he allegedly “grabbed the mother in a headlock and stabbed her repeatedly with a pair of scissors”.
“Any offending of this nature is horrific anywhere, not just outside the police station. We’re horrified by it,” she said.
“We had a citizen immediately intervene, who jumped onto him and just pulled him off the mum, and then the other two added assistance by grabbing him as well.
“Without the intervention, it could have been a lot worse, so we are so grateful for their assistance.”
Header image: Left, a man being arrested at the scene. Right, the citizens’ arrest (X).
