Miss World Australia attacked outside shopping centre
Miss World Australia has taken aim at the lack of police response after she called Triple Zero for urgent assistance when she was attacked.
Jasmine Stringer was running a workshop with a group of aspiring young pageant contestants at a Gold Coast shopping centre on Friday night, when a woman lunged towards the group in a random attack.
"This person was hurling abuse at the young girls and then charged at me from across the road and punched me straight in the face," Jasmine told Today.
"I fended her off and then she turned her sights to a 14-year-old girl."
While doing her best to protect herself and the young girls, Jasmine called Triple Zero for assistance.
As the young girls fled from the scene, Jasmine waited for police - or members of the public - to help, and was met with no response.
"I guess the most concerning part of this whole story for me is that I called Triple Zero, we are in the Southport CBD of the Gold Coast, less than three kilometres from the police station and in a 15-minute time frame when women and children are being assaulted, there was no one turning up to help," the 27-year-old said.
"I stayed there for 20 minutes on the call with the dispatcher and I was starting to get stressed, this woman was still physically attacking these children as they're trying to get into cars and taxis and it was escalating and I asked 'is someone coming?' and they were quite dismissive to me."
As part of her Miss World Australia advocacy work, Jasmine has devoted a lot of time and effort into preventing violence against women, and says this attack is the second time within a month that she's called for help from police after witnessing a violent incident and there's been nobody there to help.
'I'm going to go to the police station today just make sure that the report is made and hopefully have the person who attacked us charged," she said.
"But at this point in time, I've received no follow up from the police and it's been a really distressing situation."
Image credits: Today