A ‘bright’ and ‘talented’ student has been left with ‘life-altering’ injuries after being abducted while walking home from school and attacked by a gang of knife-wielding thugs who pushed him out of their moving car.
Year 9 student Benjamin, 14, was bundled into a dark grey Volkswagen Tiguan moments after stepping out of the gates of Glen Eira College in Glen Huntly, in southeast Melbourne, on Monday afternoon.
Inside the vehicle, he was robbed of his mobile phone and other belongings and attacked before he was thrown from the moving car several hundred metres up the road.
Benjamin remains in hospital in a serious but stable condition, and police have revealed at least two other students – aged 14 and 16 – from the same school have come forward to report they were targeted in similar attacks.
‘We had further victims come forward,’ Victoria Police Inspector Scott Dwyer told 3AW on Wednesday.
‘There have been some silent victims, they have suffered like this other boy, maybe not to the level of injuries he has, but they have not reported to their parents or police.’
Inspector Dwyer said Benjamin has suffered ‘life-altering’ injuries and severe mental trauma.
Police have revealed that the investigation has now broadened to consider if the attack was linked to a similar incident just ten minutes Benjamin’s abduction.
In that incident, four teenagers were robbed by two machete-wielding offenders on Kambrook Road, in nearby Caulfield, about 3.25pm on Monday.
Alarmingly, five other schools across Melbourne’s east have reported students being targeted by thieves in similar incidents over the past month – although police believe they are unrelated to the incidents on Monday.
Several students from Xavier College were targeted last week, while a pupil from Scotch College was robbed by three men on August 7, 9News reports.
Just three days before the attack on Benjamin, a student at Elwood College was approached by a woman in an SUV who tried to take his mobile phone, according to the Herald Sun.
Similar reports have also emerged from students from Carey Grammar, Sacre Coeur and St Bede’s College.
Police have now stepped up patrols across the region, with Inspector Dwyer describing the attacks as ‘sickening’.
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Police are still working to track down Benjamin’s attackers, who are believed to be of Caucasian appearance.
The terrifying attack took place in front of dozens of horrified students leaving school for the day.
One student saw the victim lying on the ground and coughing up blood after he fell out of the vehicle at the intersection of Neerim and Grange roads.
Benjamin was initially rushed to hospital fighting for life with critical injuries before his condition was downgraded the following day.
Detective Acting Senior Sergeant Lisa Watson said Benjamin was just an ‘innocent victim walking home from school’.
She said police had found a Volkswagen burnt out in the outer eastern suburb of Dandenong around midnight on the same day, which is undergoing testing to determine if it was the same car used in the attack.
