A homeless man who rammed a shopping trolley at a man who was threatening police with a knife is being hailed and rewarded for his actions, but he insists he is not a hero.
Michael Rogers emerged from a crowd of onlookers during the attack on Friday afternoon in downtown Melbourne, Australia, in which one person was fatally stabbed and two others wounded.
Social media users have dubbed Rogers “Trolleyman” and an online fundraiser for him by registered charity Melbourne Homeless Collective had raised more than A$100,000 (US$72,000) as of yesterday.
“Our hero is humble as can be and had no idea about this fundraiser,” the GoFundMe page reads. “He is amazing. We believe his efforts deserve a reward that can really help him out.”
In interviews with Australian media, Rogers, 46, has insisted he is no hero.
“I threw the trolley straight at him and I got him. I didn’t quite get him down, though. I’m no hero,” he told Channel Seven.
He also told Melbourne’s Age newspaper he had been on the wrong side of the law himself.
The paper reported that he had been “in and out of jail” for about 20 years, including a five-year sentence for aggravated burglary, and that he had had a long history of drug use.
“I haven’t had good experiences with police,” Rogers told the newspaper, adding that his move to help on Friday was a “spur of the moment” decision.
While Rogers won praise from the community, senior Victorian police officials were divided in their reaction.
Deputy commissioner Shane Patton said that Rogers’ help was appreciated by police on the scene.
“There’s no doubt he acted bravely,” he told ABC radio. “His assistance was greatly appreciated.”
However, later, Patton’s superior, chief commissioner Graham Ashton, said Rogers’ actions could have led to a tragic outcome.
“I don’t like to criticize people in that situation, he’s acting instinctively about what he’s looking at in front of him, but certainly if a trolley had hit a police member and knocked him over and then this offender was on top of him, it could have had a tragic consequence,” Ashton told Melbourne radio 3AW. “Luckily in this case, it didn’t.”
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
ICE DISPUTE: The Trump administration has sought to paint Good as a ‘domestic terrorist,’ insisting that the agent who fatally shot her was acting in self-defense Thousands of demonstrators chanting the name of the woman killed by a US federal agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, took to the city’s streets on Saturday, amid widespread anger at use of force in the immigration crackdown of US President Donald Trump. Organizers said more than 1,000 events were planned across the US under the slogan “ICE, Out for Good” — referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is drawing growing opposition over its execution of Trump’s effort at mass deportations. The slogan is also a reference to Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother shot dead on Wednesday in her
RSS