David Kang rushed Prince Charles in 1994 ... now he’s a barrister

Daily Telegraph (Sydney) ^ | 10th November 2015

[naturalman1975]

PRINCE Charles will touch down in Sydney today, where the man who rushed a stage firing a starter’s pistol during his 1994 royal tour is now on the right side of the law as a barrister.

David Kang, 45, was yesterday working at Burwood Local Court and helping his mother with shopping on the eve of the future king’s visit.

At his family home in Hunters Hill, Kang’s mother Kum said her son, who works at chambers in the city, was “young at the time but he’s grown up now. He has a wife and two children”.

“He’s a good boy. He loves helping people.”

Former premier John Fahey, who crash tackled the then-24-year-old at Darling Harbour, revealed yesterday Prince Charles, who reacted calmly to the sounds of the starter’s pistol, thought at first it was part of the event.

[naturalman1975]

I suppose this is almost a vanity - I'm largely sharing it because I was there at the time - standing less than 100 feet away.

I think Mr Fahey's description is somewhat flawed - the Prince has certainly told me that from the moment of the first shot, he was worried, but he'd been trained as to what to do in such a case - basically, let his security handle it, because you can't outrun a bullet. His main security officer (seen next to the Prince in the photo that accompanies this article) Chief Superintendent Colin Trimming did everything right - he literally shouldered the Prince clear while placing himself between the shooter and the Prince as a shield, and came quite close to drawing his own firearm - but the rest of the security was honestly a failure and I include my own reaction in that - I wasn't part of the formal security but I was a serving Naval officer and I froze along with almost everybody else - we all started moving after about ten seconds later and flooded the stage but if it had been real, that would have been far too late to do any good. Two of the three men seen moving to tackle the gunman in the photo are Mister Fahey (the then-Premier of New South Wales - roughly equivalent to a state governor in the US) and Ian Kernahan, a round the world yachtsman who was on the stage because he was 'Australian of the Year'. Kang should have been taken down by a sharpshooter - which would have been unfortunate for him as it was just a starting pistol but nobody could tell that.

You can see a video of it at Youtube - well, of some of it, anyway.

[pbear8]

I remember this incident, thank you for your first person account.

[Boogieman]

I learned from the Simpsons that if you are a bodyguard you really just need to leap slowly in that direction and yell: "NOOOOOOOOO!"

You don't want to actually get shot but you gotta make it look like you tried, so you can get the next job!