Passerby fights knife attacker after finding wounded woman
Sunday 16th August 2026 on 19:15 in
Austria
A passerby helped save a 30-year-old Polish mother of two after her former partner seriously injured her with a knife in Mettmach, Upper Austria, ORF reported. Thomas Sperl also fought the alleged attacker while his heavily pregnant wife was sitting in the car.
Sperl and his wife, Nadine, were driving from St. Johann am Walde in the Braunau district to a hospital appointment on Friday morning when they saw the blood-covered woman at the roadside. Sperl, a trained stonemason and volunteer firefighter, stopped and helped her into the back seat of their car.
The woman spoke English and told him that a dangerous man was following her, Sperl said. At that moment, the alleged attacker, a 37-year-old Romanian man, ran across a field towards the car and tried to open the door.
Sperl got out again, grabbed the man from behind and pulled him backwards. The two men fell into a roadside ditch during the struggle. Sperl then returned to the car and locked the doors, after which the alleged attacker reportedly stabbed the vehicle several times.
“It was pure instinct,” Sperl said. He attributed his willingness to intervene to his work with the Frauschereck volunteer fire brigade, whose motto is “Run towards where others run away.” He said he did not consider himself a hero and that anyone else would have done the same.
“I am incredibly proud of how my husband handled the situation,” Nadine Sperl said. “If he had not been there, it could have ended much worse.” The couple drove away and called emergency services.
Police arrested the suspect shortly afterwards. During questioning on Saturday, he said he could no longer remember the incident because he had been heavily intoxicated. A court ordered him held in pretrial detention on Sunday, according to the public prosecutor’s office.
The injured woman remains in hospital. She is out of danger and has regained consciousness. Investigators are treating the case as suspected attempted murder and plan to question her in the coming days.