It should have been one of the safest jobs in the country, teaching mathematics in the quiet country town of Te Puke. So when the 11am bell rang and students began to leave his class, Steve Hose’s first thought was that the blows to his neck and back were accidental, from a pupil stumbling against him.
“I was sitting at a desk, helping a student, when I felt this whack, whack, whack in my neck. For a split second,I thought someone had fallen on me, but when I felt the pain in my neck, I realised that I had been stabbed.”Speaking for the first time about the attack that has shocked New Zealand, Steve (53) and his partner Maria Thom (38) are still trying to come to terms with what happened.
Bleeding from the wounds but with no idea who had inflicted them, Steve remembers standing up, running tothe front of the class and yelling at the shocked students to leave the room immediately. “I knew he was coming behind me, and when I got to the front of the classroom I turned around and used a desk as a block. I wanted to face the person, so I could see who it was.”
He was stunned to find himself looking at one of his own Year 9 pupils, a 13-year old boy who was still holding a 10cm kitchen knife covered in Steve’s blood. Pressing his hands against the three wounds to stem the bleeding, Steve knew his best hope was to stay calm and convince the youngster to drop the knife and leave the classroom. Amazingly, he persuaded the student to do exactly that, and the moment he did school staff, whowere alerted to the incident by Steve’s pupils, rushed in to help.
Even while waiting for an ambulance to arrive, Steve’s thoughts were with the students who had witnessed the stabbing. “I had a wee chat to the kids outside, to explain to them that everything was going to be okay and tried to keep them calm,” he says.
As Steve was taken to hospital for emergency treatment, Maria received a phone call that left her shattered.”I burst into tears from the shock,” she says, holding Steve’s hand as he recovers at their Papamoa home. “Youdon’t expect your partner to go into work and get stabbed by a kid.
“I asked what happened and was told, ‘Steve’s conscious and talking, he’s sitting up and he’s quite perky.’I’ve done a lot of first aid and I knew the fact that he was conscious, talking and sitting upright were all good signs but I still cried all the way to the hospital.”
Seeing her partner of 20 years in hospital, still in the clothes he had left for school in that morning, only now drenched in his blood, brought home the seriousness of the incident. “I was upset that someone coulddo this to Steve,” she says. “It wouldn’t have taken much for Steve to be dead right now, and our kids wouldn’t havea father any more.”
Steve was discharged after treatment, but then faced another hurdle – telling the couple’s children, Serena (8) and Saffron (6), why Steve had knife wounds. “It could have been extremely traumatic for them,” says Maria. In the end, Steve simply told the girls, “There was an angry boy at school and he cut Daddy.” While his daughters accepted the explanation, Steve, who has been teaching for 30 years, still has many questions aboutwhat happened on 10 oay at Te Puke High School. “oy body is fine, but I’m still trying to cope with the stress of it,” he admits.
Because of the offender’s age, he has permanent name suppression. The police have referred the boy to Child, Youth and Family.
Relatives of the teenager, who was raised by his grandmother because his father is in prison, have told reporters they don’t know why he stabbed his teacher. Steve had little contact with the boy prior to the attack.”He was a kid who didn’t like maths very much but would still make an effort and I tried to encourage him,” he says. Since the attack, Steve and Maria have been supported by their community and the staff at Te Puke High and say it saddens them that the incident might tarnish the school’s image.
“It’s a great school and has a good name,” says Maria. “It’s a shame that people will look at this and think theschool has gone downhill, but it hasn’t. It’s just one individual and it can happen at any school.”
And despite everything, Steve says he’s looking forward to returning to the classroom in the next couple of weeks. “I’m not worrying about the possibility of being attacked again. I’m still trying to process everything and understand why someone would do such a thing,” he says.
“I did nothing wrong, I just happened to be in the wrong place and I got in the way of something – I don’t know what that something was exactly. But I’m trying not to take it personally.”
However, Maria is unsure about Steve’s determination to return so soon. If they find out what happened, thatthere weren’t others involved and steps are put in place so this never happens again, then I’ll be happy,” she says.
Maria admits she is working through different feelings towards the boy who almost took her partner from her.”I won’t keep holding onto anger because I know that doesn’t do any good,” she says. “I hope we can nowmove on and heal as a family.”
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