When Ruben Miller pulled up to Pharmacy 455 in Mount Eden, Auckland, he had no idea his errand would turn into something straight out of a self-defense training manual. The forensic scientist, who has spent more than two decades investigating crime scenes, was heading back to his car just before noon on Wednesday when screaming from inside the store stopped him cold.
He didn’t hesitate.
“My car happened to be parked right by the entrance. I just jumped straight out of the car and went back inside the shop, and saw things off the shelves being bashed around,” Miller stated.
What he found at the far end of the store was alarming.
“There was a woman lying on top of and totally smothering one of the workers.”
The worker’s hand had been cut by broken glass, and blood was visible nearby. Miller moved fast, placing himself between the attacker and the employee. But removing the woman proved far harder than expected.
“She had hold of the worker’s hair. She wouldn’t let go, and every time I tried to get her to release her grip, it just tightened. There was a lot of screaming, I’m going to f****** kill you,” he recalled.
“The worker was obviously in a lot of pain, and I was really concerned because I didn’t know what her injuries might have been.”
What turned the situation around was something Miller had been quietly practicing for years. His background in judo gave him the technical ability to restrain the woman safely and bring the chaos under control.
“I thought then that at least the situation is controlled. It’s not going to get worse. She’s controlled, she’s prone. I kept talking to her, trying to de-escalate, and she did calm down somewhat. She finally released her hair a couple of minutes before the police arrived.”
From the moment Miller stepped back through that door to the point police made an arrest, approximately 15 minutes had passed.
What unfolded in the final moments before officers arrived painted a more complicated picture. As the situation de-escalated, Miller sat beside the woman he had just restrained. She was no longer a threat. She was sobbing, her hands over her face.
“A minute or so before the police arrived, we sat next to her, and she was sobbing by that point, had her hands over her face, and we were just sort of, I don’t know, almost reassuring her,” Miller said.
The woman appeared to have violated her parole conditions and had apparently just been told she had no housing.
“She was screaming, they’ve just kicked me out. I’ve got no home.”
Miller was careful not to excuse what happened, but he left the encounter with questions that went well beyond the pharmacy walls.
The pharmacist in charge, who asked not to be named, stated that the incident began when the woman started shoving store shelves, sending stock crashing and shattering glass. When a staff member confronted her, the situation turned physical quickly.
“It was pretty surprising, everything happened so fast,” the pharmacist said, describing the experience as “quite traumatising” for her team.
The attacked employee did not require hospitalization but went home to recover. The pharmacy’s gratitude toward Miller was clear.
“The woman held onto the staff’s hair and wouldn’t let go. He was really good. He calmed her down, and she slowly released her hands. We’re so glad he was there.”
Auckland police confirmed they responded to a commercial premises on Mount Eden Road at 11:40 a.m. following reports of a disorder. A 27-year-old woman is scheduled to appear in Auckland District Court on June 16, facing charges of threats to k*ll and assault.
The story drew attention not just for Miller’s composure under pressure, but for what it revealed about a wider problem. Aaron Hendry, founder of Kick Back, an organization working with at-risk youth in Auckland, says incidents like this are a warning sign of systems that are failing the most vulnerable.
“People are being discharged either directly into homelessness or into some very substandard, dangerous and unsafe accommodation where they don’t have the capability to keep themselves safe, to keep others safe, or even to retain their tenancies,” Hendry said.
Without stable housing or support, he argues, people leaving institutions face a deteriorating cycle.
“Many are ending up on the street as a result of that, and their illness escalates. They become more vulnerable and at risk both to themselves and to others.”
His proposed solution is legislative.
“One thing the government could be doing immediately is implementing a duty to assist legislation and requiring state agencies to be clear on their obligation to support people to transition from their agency into stability, into some form of housing.”
