STAUNCH: "He was coming at me with a big meat cleaver and a small skeleton knife. I was petrified."

A knife can be seen on the ground in front of the police car.

A cordon blocks off part of Redwood School. It was closed after a caretaker was threatened by a man with a knife prior to the shooting.

KIDNAPPED: The female driver of this food delivery truck was ordered to drive towards Halswell.

A 22-year-old truck driver is being hailed a hero for trying to lure a knife-wielding attacker away from women and children in Christchurch this morning.

During the incident a 27-year-old man brandishing two large knives stabbed a woman and a Christchurch City Council worker in their own vehicles about 8am before being gunned down by police. The council worker is in serious condition and the woman, who was earlier kidnapped from a school by the knife-wielding man, has moderate injuries.

Jade Lynn, a 22-year-old father of two who is engaged to be married, said he was driving a truck to work when he saw the chaos unfold.

Iain McGregor SHAKEN: A colleague comforts Jade Lynn, the truck driver who confronted the person shot by police.

''There was a lady sitting on the pavement bleeding and crying and a guy up in the car got stabbed.

"I was driving and didn't see the stabbing but I saw this dark fella with two knives.

"He was really aggressive. I grabbed an 80kg pinch bar.

IAIN MCGREGOR/The Press JADE LYNN: 'I was petrified.'

"He was coming at me with a big meat cleaver and a small skeleton knife. I was petrified. But I was trying to get him away from the traffic and people. I was swinging the pole around trying to keep him back."

Lynn said he hit the attacker across the side of the neck with the bar but the man kept coming at him.

"He was still coming at me when the cops tasered him. He was still going [after being tasered] and then turned on the cops and started swinging the knives at the cops."

Lynn, who broke down in tears as he recounted the incident, said he was about one-metre away from the man when he got shot twice by the police.

Eyewitness Kelvin McElroy said Lynn was a "hero".



"I was coming down to get money from the ATM. A car had crashed into the wall and this guy got out of a truck and said, 'get down' to the man carrying the knives.

"He ignored him and was going at [Lynn] and then the truck driver hit him with a steel bar. He hit him in the side of the neck but he was still pumped up and didn't go down.

"That guy is a hero trying to stop that guy. That's when the cops came on the scene and the cops asked him to drop the knives."

Another witness, Bruce Cameron, echoed McElroy's praise.

Cameron - on Hoon Hay Rd waiting for a lift from a friend - didn't understand what was happening until he saw a vehicle stop suddenly and a woman covered in blood screaming.

"I didn't think it was anything out of the ordinary until I saw a woman get out and she had blood all over her.

"A guy got out too and started running up the road ... he had these two knives ... I had no idea what was going on. There was another man bleeding and people were screaming."

He saw a Christchurch City Council car crash into a wooden fence and thought the driver may have had a heart attack.

''But then I saw him get out of the car covered in blood.''

It was then Cameron saw Lynn leap from a truck with a crow bar.

"The guy with the knives was going crazy then this guy from an Armitage truck got out with a crow bar. He was trying to fend the man off and keep him away from the woman by the looks of things.

"It was lucky the cops turned up because it could have been worse. The police used pepper spray, they tasered him but nothing, and then they shot him twice."

Cameron had his camera on him.

"I just didn't know what was happening but I got a photo, an amazing photo, of the stand-off between the trucky with the crow bar and the hooded guy with the knives.

"The trucky looked angry ... he was definitely challenging this guy. If he survives his gunshot wounds then he's lucky the guy with the crow bar didn't kill him."

Cameron's memory card from his camera has been taken by police for evidence.

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