This is the terrifying moment a record store owner keels over and almost dies in the street after an anaesthetic nurse jabs him with a deadly drug in a ‘motiveless’ attack.
In shocking footage, Gary Lewis is shown sliding off a chair outside his shop, Betterdaze, before being helped into the recovery position by police officers.
The video was taken shortly after he was injected with a dose of rocuronium by Darren Harris, 57, who has now been found guilty of attempted murder.
The drug is a powerful muscle relaxant, which is capable of stopping a person’s heart if too much is administered.
Mr Lewis was left struggling to breathe following NHS worker Lewis’s ‘indiscriminate’ attack. Within minutes he was unable to move or talk and soon lost consciousness, leaving him on the ‘precipice of life and death’, police said.
The 65-year-old only survived due to prompt treatment by paramedics who performed CPR after finding no pulse and gave him oxygen. The court heard Mr Lewis would have died within minutes without the emergency treatment.
‘It was the most frightening feeling I have ever experienced and it just all happened so fast,’ said Mr Lewis. ‘I genuinely thought I was dying.’
Today, Harris’s 79-year-old father Kenneth told of his shock about his son’s bizarre attack, saying: ‘Whatever has happened is out of order, it’s just not him.’
He told of how Darren and his wife Claire were looking forward to their retirement after his son had worked his way up to become an anaesthetic nurse from a hospital porter.
Speaking from the living room of his bungalow, which was covered in family photographs, including one of Darren, Kenneth, a retired factory worker, of Middlesbrough, said: ‘I don’t understand it. He had a hell of a good reputation for a nurse.
‘He wouldn’t harm anybody. He would go out of his way to help anybody. He was a family man.
‘If I heard that anything was wrong then I would have sorted it for him. I used to be a bit of a bad lad and have a reputation but Darren is not that way.
‘He never got in any fights when he was younger and was never in trouble. My kids never got in any bother.
‘Whatever has happened is out of order, it’s just not him. I still can’t believe it.’
Harris’s stepmother and Kenneth’s wife, Brenda Cahill, 79, says her daughter thinks he may have been having a psychotic episode when he carried out the attack.
‘It’s out of character. He has always done anything for anybody,’ she told .
‘In the 24 years I’ve been with his father I have never even seen Darren raise his voice.
‘When he was working he would cover extra shifts at the hospital. Even his colleagues were shocked by it.
‘It’s just not Darren. My daughter thinks he’s had a psychotic episode. Something has clicked in his head.
‘It’s sad because he had worked really hard to get where he was. He worked his way up from nothing. He started as a hospital porter and went to university and worked his way up.
‘He has had some sort of a blip, a mental blip. Nobody has a bad word for him. He’s no fighter, he wouldn’t fight back even if he was in a fight.
‘I can’t see why he’s hasn’t even given some form of defence in court.’
Harris, who lived in a semi-detached home in Amesbury Crescent, Middlesbrough, Teesside with his wife, Claire, and two children.
Former police officer Mr Lewis described to the jury feeling ‘dizzy’ and his leg going numb as he lay on the cobbled street.
‘I remember going to the ground. I knew I was losing consciousness,’ he told the trial at Leeds Crown Court.
‘I couldn’t hold my head, my own weight, I was leaning on Sue (Allen).
‘It was in a state of paralysis. Nothing would move. I tried to move something to let people know I was still hearing, to get some sign out.
‘I felt like I was choking. My breathing was becoming harder and I was not able to communicate in any way.’
He was also fitting, the court heard.
‘I tried to scream, nothing happened, I thought I was going to die,’ he added.
Police bodycam also captures the moment Harris was arrested – and his shocking refusal to tell police what was in the syringe he used to attack Mr Lewis.
An officer asks: ‘What have you injected into him?’
‘Nothing,’ Harris replies.
‘So there’s nothing in that needle?’ the officer asks again.
‘I haven’t got a needle. I had a 10ml syringe with water, and I have just squirted the water, it was water’ says Harris.
A female office is then heard asking: ‘Are you sure that in that syringe there was nothing other than water?’
‘Just water,’ Harris replies, with another officer asking: ‘What is in that syringe?’
‘Water,’ Harris says.
‘Are you sure it’s just water?’ the officer asks again.
‘Just water,’ he replies. ‘Nothing else.’
Harris, who was today convicted of attempted murder, ambushed his victim on July 2 in Northallerton after prowling outside Mr Lewis’s shop.
The jury at Leeds Crown Court took less than two hours to find him guilty of attempted murder. Harris showed no emotion as the verdict was announced.
The judge said Harris, who has been in custody since his arrest last July, will receive a ‘very lengthy’ jail term.
Sentencing was adjourned to assess Harris’s level of ‘dangerousness.’
Leeds Crown Court heard the drug, a muscle relaxant used in anaesthetics that Harris had stolen from work, rendered Mr Lewis ‘completely paralysed’.
Harris had tried to drive off but before the drug took effect Mr Lewis ran after him, moved a sign into the road as a barrier and physically blocked his car from leaving.
He was also able to shout for help and reveal he had been injected before collapsing, the court was told.
Harris worked as senior member of the cardiothoracic operating theatre team at James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough. He had illegally taken the drug rocuronium, routinely used to aid the intubation of patients, from work.
The motive for the bizarre attack remains a mystery.
Harris, a married father-of-two, told police after his arrest he had injected Mr Lewis with water and intended to ‘frighten’ him after an altercation a month before in the shop. Harris claimed he had been pushed out of the shop to the pavement outside by Mr Lewis after going there to sell his records.
But the court heard this incident never happened. Harris sold his record collection of 300 or 400 records to Mr Lewis for £400 on May 29. But Mr Lewis said he had never argued with a customer and no one had fallen. CCTV evidence showed no fall had taken place outside.
Prosecutor Richard Herrmann told jurors: ‘It’s nonsense that there had been an altercation. There was no altercation.’
The defendant declined to give evidence but Mr Lewis, who owns the Betterdaze shop in Northallerton, North Yorkshire, recalled his ordeal to the court.
Harris returned to the shop on July 2 to buy some records and told Mr Lewis his wife had allowed him to have a music room in the house. Mr Lewis said they had a ‘very friendly conversation.’
Mr Lewis told the court he had no cause for concern, adding: ‘I was totally relaxed in his company.’
Moments after Harris handed over cash to buy an Ian Drury record he crouched down and without warning injected Mr Lewis in the buttock.
‘I felt a prick. It was very sharp and deep and painful,’ he said. ‘I was in total shock and I didn’t know what to do.’
The shop owner said he followed Harris out the shop to his car and asked what he injected him with. Harris said: ‘Only water mate.’
Mr Lewis, a former police officer of 30 years’ service, said he shouted to a colleague for help and stood in the parking area exit to block Harris as he tried to drive off.
‘I started to feel dizzy then I felt my legs go numb and I told Sue (his colleague) this who was by that point on the phone to the police and the ambulance. And I remember just becoming more and more unable to move.’
Another shopkeeper brought out a chair and Mr Lewis sat down.
‘I couldn’t hold my head, arms. I was losing consciousness,’ he recalled.
‘I tried to move something to let people know that I was still conscious.
‘I tried hands, head, voice, feet. I remember her (Sue) shouting towards the phone ‘he’s fitting!’
‘I actually thought I was going to die. I couldn’t breathe, I was choking. Nothing moved. I was even trying to scream, I know that sounds dramatic, thinking if I can’t get a word out maybe I can scream. I couldn’t do that either.’
Mr Lewis said he believed he would never recover from the trauma.
‘I am not recovered now and I probably never will,’ he said. ‘I am wary of people being behind me and near me.’
The court heard Harris would have known the effects of the drug rocuronium through his job working with anaesthetics in hospital.
Dr Alistair White, a consultant who treated Mr Lewis, told the court he would have died if he had not been helped to breathe by medical treatment. The drug stops the muscles that enable breathing from working and without medical help it quickly causes death, the court heard. Rocuronium is safe in operating theatres as patients are connected to equipment that supports breathing.
The prosecutor told the jury Mr Lewis came ‘very, very close’ to dying and ‘intended to kill’ him. A police investigation found ‘no motive,’
Judge Simon Phillips, KC, told the jury before they considered their verdict: ‘There is no need for the prosecution to prove motive.’
In a statement outside the court on Tuesday afternoon, Detective Constable Martin Ryder told journalists: ‘The defendant Darren Harris had worked for the majority of his life as a professional caring for people.
‘Inexplicably that focus switched in July of last year when he attempted to kill Gary Lewis, an innocent and decent member of the public.
‘Darren Harris injected Gary with a paralysing agent stolen from his workplace, intending to stop him from breathing.
‘Gary reached the precipice between life and death and if it were not for the immediate and brave actions of Susan Allen, other members of the public and the emergency services, Gary would have undoubtedly died on that day.
‘In my 29 years of service, I have never investigated a case that even now that leaves as many questions as answers.
‘The key question of ‘why’ remains unanswered. That question remains key to Gary and his family but also, I am sure, to the family and work colleagues of Darren Harris.
‘Gary has thankfully made a full physical recovery but his journey of mental recovery remains on going. I hope that this verdict is a key stepping stone in ending what has been a terrible period in his life.’
Giving a statement on behalf of Mr Lewis, Det Con Ryder added: ‘My life and that of my family, friends and colleagues has been irrevocably changed by the violence and unprovoked actions by Darren Harris on that day.
‘I’m grateful for the overwhelming help and support I have received throughout this six months since I was attacked.’
Harris lives with his wife and children in a semi-detached house in a quiet cul-de-sac in Middlesbrough.
Neighbours said they didn’t socialise or know him well. One said: ‘I wouldn’t see him very often but he would say hello if I did. He was quiet person.’
Harris has no previous convictions and was working in the hospital operating theatre until his arrest.