By Victoria Stone-Meadows
On a cold winter night Dermot O’Toole gave his life to protect his wife Bridget, when their Hastings jewellery store was robbed by Gavin Parry in 2013.
Now, almost four years later, Mrs O’Toole, who currently lives in Lynbrook, will be accepting a posthumous Star of Courage bravery award on behalf on her late husband.
“I heard they were considering him for the award but officially found out he was receiving it on 16 December 2016,” she said.
“It was very emotional; I was out having an eye test so I couldn’t drive and I was sitting in a corner having a coffee and just bawled by eyes out.”
“I was very emotional when I heard it, and so moved that he was considered for the award.”
The O’Tooles had been running their jewellery store on High Street for many years, but had only recently moved into a new building when they had what seemed like a normal visit from a man and his girlfriend looking to buy some jewellery.
“Little did I know that we were being set up,” Mrs O’Toole said.
About 5pm that same day, Friday 12 July 2013, Mrs O’Toole elected to respond to the door buzzer instead of her husband.
What she found in the shop was Gavin Perry, erratic and armed with a knife.
“I got up thinking he was a customer but when I walked out he was screaming like a wild animal, he kicked the gate in the counter in and I saw something in his hand.”
“He proceeded to stab me and punch me and beat me around and that’s when Dermot came out to defend me.”
“Gavin Perry knocked Dermot to the ground when Dermot got him off me. We were both trying to fight him off.”
Gavin Perry had knocked Dermot to the ground, but was yet to deliver the fatal blow.
“I wasn’t strong enough to pull him off Dermot and he could have left the shop but he actually moved around Dermot, who was defenceless on the ground,” Mrs O’Toole said.
“He moved around him to get a better aim at him.”
The last words Mr O’Toole said to his wife after Gavin Perry left the store were “Call an ambulance, I’ve been stabbed.”
However, Bridget O’Toole remembers the man that her husband was. The man who loved to dance, loved to read, and loved his family and friends with all his heart.
“It sounds cliched, but we were soulmates,” Mrs O’Toole said.
“We were together for 48 years and we worked together for nearly 30 years; there are not many couples that can wake up together in the morning, go to work all day together, come home together and be as happy as we were.”
Dermot and Bridget met at just six years of age in Dublin through their shared Irish dancing school and quickly became dance partners and fierce competitors.
The pair was married in January 1972, they made the decision to go on a big adventure and left Ireland in June the same year, arriving at Port Melbourne in July.
Dermott O’Toole started working for himself in the jewellery industry in 1983 and in 1987, the husband and wife team opened up their first shop on High Street on Hastings.
“It was great,” Mrs O’Toole said.
“He was such a great character, very funny and such a hard worker and so dedicated.”
“He just loved serving his community and people would come in just to chat to him and he would cheer them up.”
Mrs O’Toole said her late husband’s sense of hour was never dulled by tough times and his light shone though the deepest dark.
“He never felt sorry for himself – he had a stroke in 1996 and had to go through rehabilitation and speech therapy to learn to walk and talk again,” she said.
“He joked all through it, ‘You might be sorry they taught me how to speak properly again.’”
Mrs O’Toole said while the pain of losing her husband who she was so close to would never leave her, she cherished the memories they made together.
“He was a very humble man – he never sought the limelight, he loved his family, his friends he loved his golf and world politics, he could tell you the name of every world leader,” she said.
“With the tables turned, he would be suffering just as I am today because we were so close to one another.”
“I miss him so much, life is horrible without him and I guess we are all going to die but not to die like this, nobody deserves to die like this.”
Bridget O’Toole, along with her and Dermot’s three sons Christian, Dale and Trent, are very proud to accept the Star of Courage award on behalf of the late Mr O’Toole.
“It is absolutely bittersweet but we are so proud of him and my sons would say they are so grateful because without their dad’s actions, they wouldn’t have their mum.”
