In the eight years since cheating death in an axe attack at her local 7-Eleven, Sharon Hacker has suffered terrifying heart attack symptoms which are so severe she has to rush to a hospital emergency unit.
Ms Hacker was considered the luckier of the victims of trans union organiser Evie Amati’s bloody rampage in an Enmore service station in Sydney’s inner west on January 7, 2017 – but she has revealed how she been scarred for life by the ordeal.
That night, Ms Hacker, 42, had popped out for a carton of milk around 2.20am.
The other customer queueing in the servo beside her, senior project co-ordinator Ben Rimmer, 32, was buying a pie on his way home to his pregnant wife after beers with his mates.
When angry and drugged-up Amati, then 24, strolled in with her 2kg axe and an 18cm knife in her back pocket, they didn’t stand a chance.
As they lined up at the cash register, Amati swung the axe down on Rimmer first, almost cutting his head in two.
While he lay bleeding into the floor, Amati then brought the axe down two-handed into the base of Sharon Hacker’s skull.
As she lay helpless on the ground, Amati brought down a second vicious blow which would have been fatal, but luckily somehow narrowly missed.
while buying milk at a 7-Eleven in 2017, Sharon Hacker was cracked in the head by Evie Amati’s 2kg axe and now suffers permanent symptoms which feel like a cardiac arrest
Amati brings a two-handed swing of her axe down on Sharon Hacker’s head, having practised at her home hacking her sofa before walking 450m to carry out her intention ‘to kill a lot of people’
Stepping over Sharon, Amati swaggered past the petrol bowsers clutching her bloody axe as she looked for a third victim on busy Stanmore Road outside.
Mr Rimmer needed hours of surgery, four titanium plates in his face and only chated death or brain damage and blindness by mere millimetres.
Police said Ms Hacker had been fortunate to escape more serious injuries.
But in reality, she hadn’t. Her hairstyle of thick dreadlocks may have saved her a skerrick of damage.
But Amati’s axe blow – practised on her living room couch before walking 450m to the shop on a mission ‘to kill a lot of people’ – smashed Sharon’s occipital bone.
That is the curved bone shaped like a shallow dish at the rear base of the skull, which allows the spinal cord to pass through its large oval opening.
Amati’s murderous intent, and two-handed action, broke Sharon’s occipital into multiple parts.
She had to wear a cervical collar for months afterwards, and suffered shooting pains down her arm and hand, along with chest pains and sleeping issues.
Sharon Hacker (right) at the cash register buying milk as Evie Amati strolls in with her axe and an 18cm knife in her back pocket, read to kill
Grinning, a delighted Evie Amati leaves prison on Monday after serving just eight yeards for attempting to kill three people with a 2kg axe inside a suburban 7-Eleven
Amati’s crude new jail tattoo has tge words ‘DEAD’ inked on the fingers of her left hand in capital letters
Ms Hacker lost 25kg, suffers continuing nerve pain and her daughter became agoraphobic and terrified of going out after dark.
The agonising sharp pains have repeatedly made Ms Hacker feel like she was going into cardiac arrest.
After several visits to A&E, a physiotherapist revealed that the permanent damage can mimic a heart attack.
‘I’ve been rushed off to emergency a few times,’ she told Daily Mail Australia.
‘It has meant one good thing – that I have had to maintain good heart health.’
After seeing Amati released from prison on Monday – after serving her minimum sentence of just eight years for three attempted murders – Ms Hacker admitted she didn’t think the release was a good precedent.
But she was generous about the offender and hopeful for a better future.
Ms Hacker who has become a social worker since the attack – and is now dedicated to improving other people’s lives – said she believes in ‘people’s ability to change’.
Sharon Hacker, above after the attack said she wore a cervical collar for months and suffered shooting pain down her arm and hand, chest pain and sleeping issues.
Ben Rimmer required hours of surgery, four titanium plates in his face and had escaped death or brain damage and blindness
Sharon Hacker, above after Amati’s conviction, lost 25kg, suffers continuing nerve pain and her daughter became agoraphobic and terrified of going out after dark
‘There is quite a long parole period with strict conditions and Evie’s behaviour was strongly linked to drugs and alcohol,’ she said.
‘So I hope the right decisions were made.
‘I hope for society’s sake she has changed and if she hasn’t, that it doesn’t go badly.’
Evie Amati, now 32, will be on parole until her full sentence expires in 2031.
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