Man relives axe attack horror after woman police officer seriously injured

A man has described how he dragged a badly injured woman police officer into his home by her body armour after witnessing a frenzied attack on her by a man wielding a axe.

Simon Ellis, 46, said the officer suffered injuries including a severed finger and a smashed ankle, as well as cuts to her head, as she was hit a number of times with the weapon after she responded to reports of a domestic incident in Sheffield.

He said she told him she feared the attacker would kill her.

Mr Ellis said he had noticed two officers running up the stairwell in his block of flats in the Gleadless area of the city and then a woman resident emerged.

"She was saying that her boyfriend was in the process of chopping up some coppers and trying to kill them," he said.

"She said he'd lost his mind, the aliens were chasing him and he was trying to kill the police officers that I'd just seen running up the stairs."

Mr Ellis said: "As she did so, the lady police officer, who's been injured the most, came half-staggering, half-falling out of the stairwell pursued by this big bloke, this bodybuilder, with an axe.

"It was a frenzied attack, chopping at her with the axe. She was on the floor with her baton up, pleading for somebody to help her, to stop him hurting her."

He said the injured officer shouted: "He's going to kill me, get him off me."

Mr Ellis said the man fled through a nearby underpass when her male colleague arrived.

He then described how he tried to lift the officer up by the shoulder but she was so badly injured that he ended up dragging her to his flat by her body armour.

"So she asked me to drag her to my house to get her away," he said.

"She thought he was going to kill her.

"She said 'He's going to finish me off, he's going to kill me, you're going to have to get me out of here. Drag me, drag me'. So I dragged her by her body armour with blood pouring out everywhere."

Mr Ellis said he locked himself and the two women in his flat in Plowright Close until a large number of police arrived.

He said paramedics worked on the officer for more than an hour in his hallway, which is now covered in blood.

Other neighbours said the incident continued when the attacker went into a nearby Co-op store.

South Yorkshire Police said a total of five officers were injured in the incident and a man in his 30s was arrested inside the Co-op on suspicion of attempted murder.