‘Brush with death’: Controversial former prosecutor Stephen Pallaras tells all
Mystery surrounds the horrific injuries suffered by the former high-profile director of public prosecutions and now SA state election hopeful, Stephen Pallaras. He shares all in an exclusive chat with Mike Smithson.
Mystery and rumour have surrounded an accident and horrific injuries suffered by former high-profile SA Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Pallaras KC.
He was rushed to hospital after a fall outside his home on September 4.
Such was the urgency to put him into intensive medical care that his wife Stacey didn’t know for three hours to which hospital he’d been taken.
It started in the Emergency Department at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital before a transfer to the RAH.
What followed was six days in an induced coma in ICU, a further three weeks there and then another four weeks of rehab in the Repatriation Hospital.
Doctors had told his wife to expect the worst and summon family members from as far away as Switzerland.
Mr Pallaras, 74, is now back at his North Adelaide home with a total loss of memory of the day and the incident.
A heart attack or stroke have been ruled out, with doctors just as mystified as the patient himself.
He was officially discharged last Friday and invited me around for an exclusive one-on-one chat about how he’s handled his painful journey so far and where he’s headed into the future.
My first observations were of a person who’d been through the proverbial wringer.
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“I still look back on it and think what in the hell happened and why it happened,” he said.
“They’re not questions I’ve got answers to yet.
“My issue was I didn’t know, it came upon me without any warning.”
But at least he’s looking much less worse-for-wear than during his several weeks in hospital and now considers himself very lucky to be alive.
The man once dubbed by former Labor Premier Mike Rann as SA’s Elliot Ness of crime fighting suffered fractures across most of his face, including both eye sockets, skull and nose.
The experienced lawman was head prosecutor in SA from 2005 until 2012 when he was replaced by his deputy Adam Kimber.
He departed acrimoniously after a massive falling out with then Attorney-General Michael Atkinson and the non-renewal of his contract.
Pallaras famously stated that “no other government in the history of this proud state had been able to stuff up virtually everything they had touched.”
He’d fought long and hard to avoid budget cuts to his office which he warned would result in massive staff losses.
Some claimed he fell from grace because he was never going to be a puppet the government wanted.
Rumours have been circulating that Pallaras was mugged and left for dead outside his North Adelaide home, but he all-but rules that out.
“I can’t confirm or deny that because I don’t remember,” he says.
“But the two witnesses who saw me fall would have told me if that was the case, and they didn’t.”
A nearby real estate agent and another person were first to attend Mr Pallaras and immediately called an ambulance and that action is likely to have saved his life.
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“It was because I had taken care of myself physically that I was able to withstand it and be able to recover from the trauma of what happened.”
Pallaras well knows the potential of unexpected head knocks which can be the result of accidents or deliberate punches, such as the one that killed former cricketing legend David Hookes.
“I’ve prosecuted many cases where there’s a one hit punch from behind which is enough to kill people sometimes,” he said.
“So, to that extent I think I’m fortunate that I didn’t fall on the back of my head and fell on my face.
“But I’m even more fortunate that I was able to get up, in the sense that I was able to survive it.”
As a regular jogger, he’s hanging up the shoes until he has the confidence to venture into the great outdoors, and he certainly wants more insight into his condition.
Some might “tell him he’s dreamin’” but Stephen Pallaras still has his sights firmly set on winning an Upper House seat in next March’s state election.
His Real Change SA party is heavily focussed on preventing domestic violence and he intends spearheading the challenge to win as an Independent.
The horrific fall is certainly a setback, but he’s now prepared to climb the seemingly Mt Everest task ahead.
“One effect it’s had on me is to make me more determined to achieve something, and that is to achieve the political policies that I’ve spoken out about,” he told me.
Mr Pallaras has received a mountain of support and well wishes from friends and strangers since his accident was splashed across the media.
But in the cut and thrust of politics, there appears to be little time for genuine sentiment from North Terrace.
At the time of speaking to him yesterday, only Liberals Penny Pratt and Frank Pangallo had reached out with personal well wishes.
That may tell you plenty about them and others, including party leaders, who haven’t quite got around to it.
In 20 years of personally knowing Pallaras, I’ve witnessed a person who doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
Perhaps his brush with death might give him a new lease on life.
Mike Smithson is weekend presenter and political analyst for 7NEWS.
