'It clicked': how a cop cheated death one wintry day

Despite successfully tackling an armed robber and holding him to the ground in the middle of a shopping centre, Mr Hermiston found himself with a gun pointed at his head.

The off-duty Queensland Police officer had just cheated death at nine o'clock on a Monday morning in a Brisbane suburb.

It was a cloudy day in winter 1999 and Mr Hermiston was expecting a pretty sedate day off from work.

Going to the Indooroopilly shopping centre with his wife Maureen and daughter Louise was about as exciting as it was going to get.

Six weeks earlier, Mr Hermiston had just missed an armed robber at the Medicare shopfront by waiting at the wrong exit.

Before he went into that very shop he half-jokingly told his family to keep an eye out for a man with a gun and a balaclava.

"It was about a minute, minute and a half later, Maureen comes running out," he said.

"I went up to the door to have a look, and I saw the guy. He's a big fella, balaclava and all that.

"It was sort of just so funny. Six weeks later, the same thing happens. It was unreal."

"He pushed an old lady out the way, and I thought, oh, that seems a bit, you know, that's not nice."

As the man left the shop Mr Hermiston ran up behind him, pinned him to the ground and removed his balaclava.

A tussle ensued with the man striking him in the face and threatening to shoot him.

Luckily Mr Hermiston's career as a Scottish league footballer in the 1960s had prepared him for it.

"You got a lot of kicks and knocks, and you just pick pick yourself up. So that's in your system."