Ron Fenton is the first to admit he shouldn’t have been alive to collect his 40-year service medal from Victoria Police earlier this month.
The former Werribee sergeant (pictured) says he was clinically dead five times during his career, which took him from patrolling the streets of St Kilda in the 1970s and working with search and rescue, to returning to active duty in Werribee in 1996.
The most harrowing time of Sergeant Fenton’s career came when he was shot on November 21, 1984. A member of the Caulfield car crime squad, he was searching for a man who had shot and killed a security guard. The gunman fired 27 rounds into Sergeant Fenton’s car, one bullet going into the back of his head. He was conscious for 90 minutes before slipping into a coma after being taken to hospital. His family was told he would be dead within three hours.
Arrangements were made for a police and military funeral to highlight Sergeant Fenton’s 12-year career with Victoria Police and the army reserve – but 10 days later he woke up.
“I was paralysed down one side and had to learn to walk and talk again. Everything a child learns to do, I had to learn again but I had to do it at 29.”
The shooting was not the first time Sergeant Fenton had faced a gun or been seriously injured in the line of duty. Over the years he’s fallen out of a helicopter, almost drowned, fallen off a cliff, and broken his back. He was also bitten by a man with HIV at Werribee.
It took Sergeant Fenton 12 years to return to the streets after the shooting.
During that time, he completed a second stint with the search rescue and worked at Victoria Police’s Prahran headquarters and its emergency communications centre as a radio operator. He was also a law instructor at the police academy. His return to active duty in 1996 was one of the best days of his life. “I had lied to myself for 12 years about how I didn’t miss the street because it was dangerous. Then I was at the station on the day of the Werribee Cup in ’96 and there was a brawl and one of our boys was glassed at the Racecourse Hotel. I ended up in a brawler van going down Synnot Street and I thought I’ve missed this.”
He retired on February 5, 40 years and four days after he joined the force.
He was presented with a service medal by Chief Commissioner Ken Lay at a ceremony on August 3. “I’m proud of what I’ve done, I’m proud of what I’ve achieved and moreover, I’m proud of the people I’ve helped”
