September 8, 2024 • 46 mins
A little over a year before Emma Lovell was killed in her home by a youth offender who was out on bail, one of the boys involved in that crime had broken into another home and stabbed the occupant.
In this episode, we recount that terrifying night in August 2021 when Aaron and his wife Christine awoke to a stranger standing at the foot of their bed.
We explore the physical and emotional pain that youth crime inflicts on victims, long after the incident has passed.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Approche production.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
In the last episode of Who's to Blame, we heard
one of the seventeen year olds that had broken into
Leon Emma's house and killed Emma on Boxing Day in
twenty twenty two had done this before. The only main
difference was that the time before no one died. Aaron
and his wife Christine continue to tell their story.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
This Sunday night, we went to bed and it happened
the wee hours of Monday morning, about twelve thirty ish. Yeah,
it was a really quiet weekend actually because we were
actually in lockdown, and it was one of those snap
lockdowns for COVID that had actually only been lifted at
four pm on the Sunday evening, So we had a
(00:52):
really quiet weekend. I think we're in bed at like
six or six thirty, like Jerry, a.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Trick hour distinct thing, really early to bed. Yeah, it
was just a quiet weekend.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I had got up to go the bars through and
so I hadn't quite fallen back to sleep, and then
I heard noises which I thought initially sounded like possums potentially,
and then the more I listened, the more it felt
like footsteps.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
And were you thinking those footsteps at the time, were
inside your house.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Or outside of your house?
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Inside our bedroom is on the top was on the
top floor of that house. You were awake, I think Aaron,
and so I was whispering to him, up, I think
someone's in the house.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Well, I think that's right. I mean, it's odd, isn't it.
The recollection we both had is my recollection was I
was whispering to you someone's in the house, because I
also heard some noises as well. But I don't think
the reality of someone being else was truly going through
my mind. You know, you sort of do hear noises
at night. I think I remember having a conversation reflecting
(02:13):
a little bit, thinking maybe it was an animal, because
at that point in time, I certainly didn't have any
fearful emotion going through my body. It was just a
bit of noise and just this old little conversation we
were having.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Had you ever talked about that prior, like in a
party with friends that had been broken into anything like that,
Had that sort of someone being in your house of
what do we do? Conversation ever happened between the two
of you.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
No, no, no, definitely not there was. There was definitely
no conversation I can tell there was definitely no battle
plan if we were confronted.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
With it, you know, to use my own experience, I
sleep with a baseball bat under my bed. I always
have for a long time. I've got a samurai saw
it in the cupboard. I don't know what I'd do
with either of them, to be honest, not that way incline.
But so you.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Didn't have any of that, didn't have it.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
We do now, but not none.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Of that because it was August.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
We're slate with our bedroom door open, because none of
the kids were living with it or were with us
at that stage.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
Which is great.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Well, the next thing in my mind was looking down
the end of the bed and then seeing the figure
of a person at the end of the bed, so
in the room. I don't think there was a lot
of thoughts from this point onwards other than the person.
(03:49):
I think I started to move and went out of
the bedroom, and then I jump up and in a
very loud I feel it was aggressive now telling someone
to get the f out of my house, and I
started chasing this person.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
It's a bit out of character for you, right, You're
not an aggressive guy.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Oh, entirely out of character. Yeah, no, really anti violence,
to be frank with her. So this reaction of mine,
I'm not sure where it came from. I spoken with
the police and a psychologist about it subsequent to try
and understand the reaction. Yeah, I understand. It's that typical,
you know, sort of vital flight scenario, and the brain
sho sort of sent me the message that I need
(04:31):
to do something about this, and I was conscious I
want to protect my wife, feeling were very vulnerable in
that situation.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Christine, what are you doing at this stage.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
I hadn't seen that there's a person in our bedroom
because I was looking at Aaron whispering I think someone's
in the house, So I didn't have that visual, so
I didn't really know how close they were. But Aaron
did get up and did start making a lot of noise,
(05:02):
like a lot of noise. I think you were also
stamping your feet. You were clapping your hands and like
really loudly, like it was quite loud for you know,
one am or whatever it was. Then Aaron yelled out
to me, Duhl, you need to call an ambulance. I'm
in real trouble. And I had no idea what had happened.
(05:24):
It was pitch black, but out of our bedroom there
was a landing and then there were like two steps down.
So in my head I went to maybe he's fallen
down the stairs, slipped and fallen down the stairs. And
with all the noise he was making, I couldn't hear anything,
you know, much else.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
He's either you know.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Really hurt his back or he's you know, split his
head open or something. And then I was kind of
trying to find the phone, and then he was starting
to crawl into the bedroom and then there was just
blood everywhere, and I was got onto the phone to
(06:06):
triple O.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
They say, what my memory is?
Speaker 4 (06:16):
What do you need?
Speaker 3 (06:18):
And I said an ambulance and they said what's happened?
And I said, we've had a home invasion and my
husband's been stabbed. And then they said we'll get the
police and the ambulance. And then they ask a lot
of questions about where the wound is, how many people,
which I couldn't answer.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
I never saw anyone.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Are you calm at this point.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Or are you I'm a mess, not crying, but I
remember just repeating that, repeating to them, please hurry, please hurry,
please hurry, and answering questions, but like, please hurry, let's
go to you.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
So we've heard Christine doesn't know what's happened. She knows
you're in trouble, that you've said. So what happens. You
get up, you stop your feet, you clap, You tell
this guy to get the fuck out of your house.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
I chased him, so I remember him then running and
he ran onto our balcony, so out of door, onto
our balcony. I sort of from memory sort of slowed
down and stopped at that point in time because then
I saw him sort of literally leap over the balustrade,
and I remember thinking at the time, this is a
problem for him. It was a big, big drop. Ultimately
(07:32):
ended up being a problem I heard in terms of
some damage to his legs. But it was then within
a split second, I just felt this massive pain in
the right side of my back and I clapsed the ground.
At that point in time, I felt I put my
right hand behind my back and felt it's like it
felt like a bit a piece of me to being
(07:53):
cut by a sharp knife that had just opened up.
And then I felt the blood and I felt my
body opened up and I didn't see the person, but
in my head. I knew I had been stabbed. I
knew it it stabbed, it was it was it was
an implement that had got me. And then I just
started crawling to the bedroom, back to Christine and connecting
(08:16):
the dots. That's when I said, called triple zero. I thought,
I said, I think I'm gone. But whatever, it was, whatever,
we both call it time. But yeah, I just remember
I couldn't walk, and yeah, I knew I was in trouble.
Speaker 5 (08:35):
It was a.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
The realization in life that you just have never had
before that for the first time, the frailty of your
situation was brought home immediately and fortunately I'm here.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Did you think that was the end?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah? Yeah, I for a bit there, I did, didn't. I.
I was just really worried about it. I just knew
I I knew I'd been stabbed. I had a realization
as to what had gone on. And there was a
lot of blund wasn't there. Yeah, it was crawling, so yeah, yeah,
(09:18):
I was. I was worried at that point. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
My memory is.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Like there were a lot of police, there were sniffer dogs,
streets were corded off, the police came in. I was
obviously scared to answer the door because I didn't know
who was in the house still after what happened to Aaron.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
But the Trevilo were great.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
They're like, the police will be knocking now, and I'm like,
how I know it's them, And so.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
That happened.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
So I was downstairs, took the police up to Aaron,
and then the ambulance.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Arrived very soon after.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
So then the police started kind of assessing Aaron. I
think ahead of the ambulance arriving, it was all just happening,
and you know, a bit kind of you know, you've
just woken up, you know, horrific things just happened.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
So yeah, I'm not.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Sure I can remember a great deal other than I
just wanted to be near Aaron. So the police wanted
to ask me what happened while I was outside of
the room, but I kept on wanting to go and
make sure Aaron was that you know, Aaron knew I
was around.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Are you worried for him at the start?
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Yeah, very worried, very worried.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
I do have one distinct memory when Triple O was
saying to me, let him line on the floor, get
him a pillow, and I remember thinking, you know, in
movies when people are saying stay with me, stay with me,
stay with me, I'm like, I don't actually want him
to get comfortable because I don't want to close I
(11:05):
don't want him to close his eyes because what happens
if he doesn't wake up? So it sounds awful that
I actually wanted him to be uncomfortable in the sense
that I wanted him to stay with me.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Not just light down a comfy pillow and go to
slap That will stick in my mind forever.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
So guessing you're there fairly quickly the.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Yeah, I do call them. I think I might have
a pair of box for sure, ripping them off doing
this assessment of me. Thankfully, they gave me some good
drugs that sort the pain. I do have a memory
of being in the ambulance and I remember there was
you were with me. I think, weren't you one of
(11:51):
the paramedics with one of the big needles. And by
this time I was under control because I was truly medicated,
and so I remember I remember asking the question what's
that for that long needle? And the response I got
These won't be the words, but it was something along
the lines if We're worried that the knife maybe impacted
(12:14):
your lungs and that we might have to break through
your rib cage to flat your lungs to get you
to the hospital for surgery. They just weren't They just
they didn't know what damage had been caused. Obviously at
that point in time. The rest of the little blurry
Christine better probably fill it in. But it was in
the emergency. I remember it was warm.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
You were taken into No, you were taken into a
I have these rooms in the hospital where you've been
in shock, heated assessment room to try and figure out
what damage and I think they did a scan in
that room to see what damage had been done.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Interns. I wasn't there.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
I had to sit outside, so I was in emergency.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
What do you learn after you get out of surgery?
What do you find out about your injury?
Speaker 1 (13:09):
That I was extremely lucky. The surgeon was a lovely
lady who came and gave me a post off briefing
that the knife had come in appeared to have come
in on an angle on the right side of my back,
sort of around the middle of my back, making a
significant flesh wound but missing the vital organs somehow nicked
(13:35):
my diafe from and my spine pulled it up so
up into my spine, so I look, I shocked, but
grateful that ultimately the end of the day it was
cleaning out a wound and you know, sewing me back
(13:57):
up again. And I was told at that point in
time that the guy was just extremely lucky and I
would recover.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
That weapon that was used. Was that from your home?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
No, they brought it in. Yeah, there was a lot
of sort of careful analysis done by the police on
that aspect of it, wasn't it.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah, they never found the weapon, but we had to
do a knife for it.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
There were obviously two offenders inside your house. Were there
others involved that you're now.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
A were of, Yeah, you're looking again. This is sort
of after required knowledge. So when you say obviously two,
we think just the two. We think the person who
put the knife in my back had been downstairs in
our garage because from recollection, you remember someone racing up
the stairs after I started chasing the first person out.
(14:53):
But we now know that there was a young fourteen
year old was it in the car out the front
of our house and that person was the driver.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
But that car was stolen.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Cover stolen had been your.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Stolin red Hell earlier that night.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
So there was a bit of a spree because oddly enough,
to divert just briefly, I was sitting getting my haircut
about twelve months ago, and for whatever reason, I am,
the hairdress was asking me where I lived and how
long I'd lived there, and I'd moved from a house
to house and why And I said that you really
want to know, and so I told him the reason why.
And there's this lady sitting next to me who turned
(15:34):
around and she said, you're not going to believe this,
but the people that came into your house must have
broken into my house just prior to you. Because the
police told me how lucky she was because the next
person they broke into got stabbed. It was that same
night at that same time. It was an unreal to
me having that conversation. So, yeah, we learned a lot.
(15:57):
How much of the whole possible we've put together, They
don't know, the police will know a lot more, but
I mean they were wonderful, but they sort of you know,
at one point I wanted to look at the file,
and they certainly encouraged me not to do any of that.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Yeah, listening to Aaron and Christine tell their story, it
sounds so familiar to Lee's story. And these aren't the
only two stories like this. We've heard it so many
times before from an international rugby player, Tottai Kfu and
his family members who were stabbed in cooper U.
Speaker 6 (16:32):
Dozens of police officers swarmed this suburban street in Coopero,
only to find out it was home to one of
Australia's rugby grates. Tottai Kefu had been stabbed trying to
protect his family in an alleged home invasion.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
He suffered serious wounds to his abdomen, while his wife,
Rachel was significantly injured on her arm.
Speaker 6 (16:53):
Police alleged mister Kefu's wife was confronted and threatened with
a knife, demanding she hand over khakeys in the alleged robbery.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
The two adult kids were also slashed, and a name
who tried to help was assaulted outside.
Speaker 6 (17:07):
One of the alleged defenders, A fifteen year old boy,
was restrained by a neighbor until police arrived.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
One of the youngest teenagers was out on bail. Of
the time, three.
Speaker 6 (17:18):
Youths have been arrested. One of them, a fifteen year old,
is facing a string of charges, including four counts of
attempted murder.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
He also went on to allegedly commit more break ins
after he was arrested and released over the attack. But
for now, let's head back to Aaron and Christine. We'll
talk about the recovery process, not just the physical wounds,
but the emotional toll it takes on mental health as
well as the changes had happened after Aaron was.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Stabbed significantly in the sense that we've now got security comers,
which we never had. We do have an alarm system
that when the kids aren't home, we can alarm the
whole house and go to sleep, So and that was
particularly useful for us in the immediate after Martha, and
(18:06):
we're still quite traumatized.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
We've got a lock in our bedroom.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Door, so we actually lock ourselves in our bedroom every night.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Yeah, that was the biggest thing. I think for me,
it was going to be just having that lock on
the bedroom door and a program in my head that
I developed with a psychologist over a period of time
after the incident about what would happen if I'm confronted,
Because again, now psychologist is such a lovely lady. I
just I'm so entirely grateful for the work that she's
(18:39):
done to help me get to where I am now.
But she did promise me lightning doesn't strike truce and
would never have it again. But like you, Joe, I've
got I was encouraged to have a baseball under my bed.
You know, we talked through the scenario over this unlikely
event the alarm doesn't go off, the lock on the
door gets penetrated, that they happen to just smash in
(19:00):
the bedroom door because that's locked as well. What's your
next thing? And I said, I don't know, to get
a baseball back for the goasebook. Have a baseball bat
under your bed.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
And that was really to help us sleep at night,
because we had terrible periods of just not terrible, just
not being able to sleep at night. Any slight noise
would send your adrenaline through the roof and then you're
awake for hours afterwards.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
How long did you stay there before you get rid
of that house and leave.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
A long time? So that happened in the August. We
didn't sell, we bought this place. We're currently in the
February but so we had We did look at a
few apartments because I thought maybe apartment living, you know,
there's a few more stages of security to get through.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
Couldn't really easily find something.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
But I think we're both so traumatized that I actually
couldn't get my head around having to move, and Aaron
was so sick that he was unable to do anything.
Really like weeks, Basically you're on a walking stick, then
you were eventually in a wheelchair.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
I was up.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
The only thing that really seemed to help your pain
was hot water bottles would take it away. So I'd
be up four or five times a night until I'd
hear him groaning when the water bottle would wear off,
and so I'd get up again. And so that was
probably the first six weeks when he was out of hospital.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
So this is the physical aspect of what happened to you.
The knife wound was more than a flesh wound, but
equally didn't puncher any major arteries or anything like that, which,
as you said, very lucky about.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yeah, that was the thing that sort of surprised me
a little bit. So I recovered from the surgery pretty well.
I came back home early. Things The first few days
were going pretty well. I was on pain medication, of course,
but pretty early on I was getting a lot of pain,
(21:10):
and you know, the doctors were telling me it's normal
to have a lot of pain after a traumatic event
like this, so I was putting it down to that.
But it was just getting worse and worse. As Christine said,
I had to start just using a walking stick to
move anywhere, progressed to a wheelchair. I was up all night.
(21:33):
The pain was just getting increasingly worse. And again I
was going to physio and doctors, and I was told, no,
this is a recovery. You know, these are pains for
your recovery. And I look back in hindsight to be
once the JA I think to myself that I should
have just raced a hospital a lot earlier than I did.
But it got to a point where it was just unbearable.
(21:56):
So this period that we're talking about now, with this pain,
I couldn't deal with anything other than the physical pain.
At that point in time, I was seeing a psychologist
who was helping me out with the event, but even
then I couldn't really deal with the event. I was
in awful, awful pain, and so dealing with the event
(22:17):
came a little bit down the track once I figured
out with the pain that it was actually an infection
that got into my bone, and so by the time
we got to hospital and started to address that, at
one point I was told that I was very close
to death from this. This is the second time, and
so Jay it was it was really dealing with that.
(22:40):
I look back now and just it was really the
physical pain until I got out of hospital the second time,
which I was in there for a month or so
and then came home. I'm under nursing care, you know,
with introvening, the strip of dripping antibotics just sitting above
my heart. And then once I got over all of that,
(23:01):
it was then I was able to start to reflect
on emotional trauma of it. I spent a lot of
time with my psychologist who said to me at one
point in time that the only way to move forward
with all of this is we need to start to
talk about it, and we need to walk through what
happened in as much detail as you can, which I
started to back then with my psychologist and it was
(23:23):
just so helpful because she helped me unpack it. She
helped me understand a lot of things, including that these
young offenders who came into our house, we're not there
because they necessarily want us to do harm to Christine
and I. It wasn't about that. It wasn't a bandetta
about us. They were on a spree and our house
(23:44):
they happened to get into, and you know, they had
a violence. They had violence as part of their response
to anything that goes wrong once they enter our house.
So once I'd unpacked it, and I think once we moved,
because I was sort of waking up screaming, wasn't I
at the other place impact it? You know, After a
(24:06):
period of a few months, I started to realize that
the best thing that I can do is talk to
people who want to talk to me about it, And
most psychologists said that's probably the best thing to help
you get over it and avoid a late nonset of
PTSD on the track. And so I've just taken the
approach now, friends, family, people who I deal with, clients
(24:29):
even who have taken an interest in all of this,
and colleagues in the law industry, and I'm very very
grateful for many of them who want to talk a
talk and hence, you know, yourself asking do you want
to come and have a chat today about this, and
more than open to do.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
So.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
This is sort of early twenty twenty two. You're starting
to feel like yourself again. Your body healing, your mind
is healing, You're dealing with help about how you navigate
some of the trauma that you've gone through both.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, early twenty twenty two started to feel like I'm
moving forward again in my life, just with all of
those things that you've mentioned.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Those boys are arrested some period from within.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
So the police were great. They kept us informed fairly
consistently along the way because I wasn't able to identify them.
It was a circumstantial evidence case for the police with
the difficult cases, but they did a wonderful job. You know.
They managed to get some camera footage from our street
(25:42):
where the car left after they came into our house,
and then they were able to put together a whole
bunch of footage and other types of evidence to ultimately
find them, and then some other things. And so I
was very surprised at how quickly I think arrests were made.
I think arrests were made within maybe weeks some months. Yeah,
(26:06):
I was surprised because I wasn't able to identify them,
so I wasn't able to assist, which was disappointing for me.
But it was dark, the clothing seemed dark that they
were wearing. I couldn't identify facial features.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
And then you've got all the trauma around it too.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
All the trauma and that difficulty identifying DNA and then
but look, I couldn't speak more highly about the police
and the case they put together and the charge that
they brought were attempted murder charges, and I was very
grateful that they chose to bring charges that I thought
accurately reflected the nature of the crime.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Were you able to attend the court when those two
boys were convicted?
Speaker 1 (26:46):
So the first boy went to court When we were
overseas in twenty twenty two, we had a long planned holiday,
and after finding out that that's when the sentencing hearing
was set down for, we made a deliberate decision not
to cancel holiday and not to fly back to simply
(27:07):
attend a court process. We'd love to have been there.
I did a victim impact statement, yeah, which I it
was really just trying to explain to the offender the
impact that this crime has had on myself and my
wife and our lives. So trying to get through to
(27:27):
someone who is going to be sentenced and where the
victim impact statement is something that you know, the judges
do take into account. And the second offender was I
feel about yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
So the yeah, we'll both charged with attempted murder.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
I understood they were, but before the matters went through
the sentencing process. So I got a call from the
former Director of Public Prosecutions here in Queensland and had
a challenging conversation, not challenging in the sense that was
challenging to how the conversation with him, but challenging in
(28:11):
the sense that he was doing his job and explaining
to me why the attempted murder charges couldn't be followed
through by the prosecution. The nature of the case was
such that it was going to be difficult to prove
those charges before a court to the criminal standard. All
that was explained to me, which I was very very
(28:31):
upset about because at that point in time, I think
I was going through a bit of an anger cycle
and my attitude was I would rather have a most
serious offenses to be put before the court and let
the court decide, because that's how I felt about the
(28:51):
matter in totality, that is that the charge I wanted
to reflect the impact on me in terms of the
nature of the crime. So I didn't have a choice
in it. And that's the way the prosecutorial system works,
you know, the prosecutors have to run the case before
the courts. But I was very, very disappointed to find
out ultimately the charges were downgraded to I'm awful lending.
(29:14):
But what that meant was just it just left a
really sort of, I don't know, deflated outcome for us.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
I mean, we looked quite angry.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
I remember being quite angry about the outcome of the
hearing while we were overseas we found out about the outcome.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
Bit of disbelief.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
And then anger at the second one where we went
and the contempt that was shown for the court by
the accused didn't show up for the first hearing. Just
couldn't care less, really was the impression I got, And
you know, very little consequences.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
Can I go to.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Christmas? How do you spend Christmas?
Speaker 3 (30:07):
We had Christmas here in our new place with all
the family, which was great, and then we went up
to the Sunshine Coast.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
Two days later.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
When do you hear about what happened to Lea and
Emma Lover? Do you remember that moment?
Speaker 3 (30:25):
I remember reading it on you know, your news feed
on my phone. I tried not to think too much
about it, to be honest, because I feel like we've
just done a lot of work to try and get
into the headspace that we were in.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
Very much needed a break.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Like the overseas trip was wonderful, but it did have
the sentencing, you know, that kind of martyred a little.
And overseas travel is different to just a holiday by
the beach. So I felt like we both needed a
holiday by the beach.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Yeah, me too. Yeah, I read about it. There's a
games of reflection on youth crime in the suburbs that
I didn't know anything about Tilliams and happened to us,
And it seemed, Joe, they just seemed to be in
my mind that things were just escalating. They just seemed
to be more of it, and so I was sort
(31:22):
of deeply saddened and upset by it. But at that
point in time, again it was just another really piece
of really sad news, and we were able to reflect
on it because we've been through it, and just in
a sense to feel very sad for the love of family.
But quite equally, I remember having a bit of a
reflection thinking how lucky I was to get through it
(31:42):
and that didn't happen to me.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
And when do you find out that one of the
boys that was in your house was the person that
killed Emma.
Speaker 5 (31:57):
I've had a lot of.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Contact from the media since my incident, off and on,
some of which I've engaged with. Others I haven't, but
I did take a phone call twenty seventh, wasn't that's
the next time the twenty seventh from someone from the media,
and the conversation went something along the lines of Aaron,
(32:27):
you might have heard in the media about the tragic
circumstances involving at a level, do you mind if I
mention a name to you, because we think in the
media that one of the individuals who was involved in
your matter was also involved in that. And so I said,
(32:47):
that's fine. And I was on the phone and the
journal mentioned this young person's name, and that was harrowing.
I just said to the journal, just give me a second.
I put the phone down and I said to my
(33:08):
wife journo has just put this name forward, and I
asked you your reflection on the name, and we were
both in agreement that having regard to the name, it
was the same person who was sentenced for offenses associated
with the crime against us. And I was able to
then say to the journalist that that name is the
(33:31):
same person. And that's when we found out, and that
then escalated in our minds, both from an emotional perspective,
and I was feeling very physically unwell about all of
this at the time, a lot of thoughts because having
found out about that day, that twenty seventh, it was unbelievable,
(33:55):
and not only unbelievable that it happened, because the same
person was involved, and we've just seen someone being sentenced
a month earlier, and here we go, someone's now dead.
I personally actually felt a little bit of guilt. Maybe
I didn't do enough, you know, going through my head
(34:18):
about the charges being downgraded to I'm awful wounding. It's
obviously impacted the sentence. Did I do enough to advocate
for some change that could have saved Emma? I don't know.
It just that was a very very difficult time, and
I've felt a lot of guilt about that. Can I
(34:39):
just say we're doing really well when that was harrowing
and backing it? But you feel a bit like it
all of the time. There's so much that goes on
in the media. I just I don't know whether it's
because we've been through this that I'm more alert to
youth crime and you know what gets reported in the media,
(34:59):
but I feel I'm just hearing it all the time.
So you never escape from the reminder of it all.
You just get better again sort of dealing with it.
But there are a lot of triggers that still go on.
It'll be years before we wake up one day and
we don't have a trigger about this.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Let's head forward a year and a bit later to
Emma and Lee Lovell's house in North Lakes when police
arrests two people and later charge them with murder. One
of them is the same boy that stabbed Aaron back
in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 7 (35:36):
And through some very good investigative skills demonstrated by the detectives,
they managed to locate four persons who were taken into custody.
I can say at this point in time that two
of those people or seventeen year old boy from Zornia
and a seventeen year old boy from Holland Park will
(35:56):
be charged later today with murder, attempted murder and break
an enter.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
When do you hear that they've arrested the two boys.
Speaker 5 (36:13):
That were in your house that night?
Speaker 8 (36:15):
I'm not really too sure to be on us. Like
I probably would have said it was like later on
that day. I think later on that day, like the
police came round and uh, a couple of detectives there,
So I think I would have found out there, But
I'm not exactly too sure, but it was probably the
next day, I'm guessing, you know a few hours later
I was told, cause I do know since then I
have found out that within you know, three or four hours,
(36:38):
and they'd got them at the house around the car
from us. Yeah, and how did they get the uh,
partly through sniffer dogs.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
I think.
Speaker 8 (36:48):
Maybe I think the police knew that there was a
a residential care house around the corner from us, and
so yeah, maybe they tried there and then there was
I think maybe a person that had answered the door.
And then while the while the police were talking to
the personal's door, I think they they had heard noises
in the back or something, so gone in and then
(37:09):
found the two people hiding under a blanket in another
bedroom or something.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
So so let's quickly talk about the residential care. That's
a place where I guess juveniles go or can go
on parole or where they've been not incarcerated and they're
looked after in a home of some descriptions.
Speaker 8 (37:28):
Yeah, I believe there's like different levels of you know
that the company that was running it, there's like different
care homes, and I think they have different.
Speaker 5 (37:37):
Levels of care. Like some of them.
Speaker 8 (37:39):
Some of the houses don't necessarily need to have like supervision.
Some have like intense supervision or such, you know. But
the house there around the corner, I know that there
should have been some supervision. But when I'm led to
believe the person doing that had gone on annual leave
and just left and then no one had taken their place.
Speaker 5 (38:00):
No one was monitoring that house, you know. So were you.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Aware that there was a residential care?
Speaker 8 (38:05):
No knew nothing about it now, So they try to
keep it quiet because some of the people in the
houses are dealing with maybe domestic violence issues or you know,
parental issues, and they don't necessarily want the parents or
other family members known where these houses are to come
and get the kids or whatever on a few teens whatever.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
These two boys are seventeen years old. Are they related
to each other? Not the mowhare of known and they're
both living in this residential carehouse.
Speaker 4 (38:33):
No.
Speaker 5 (38:33):
See, this is the thing. They should never have been there.
Speaker 8 (38:36):
While I've been told by the polices that they were,
they were both should have just been staying with their
own families in One.
Speaker 5 (38:44):
Should have been in Zilmia, one should have been in
Holland Park.
Speaker 8 (38:47):
But I believe that one of them was let out
on bail boxing day morning afternoon and instead of going home,
then got transport up to North Lakes along with the
other one and they were sported or they'd been at
that house from like four thirty pm that afternoon. The
(39:10):
police can track their whereabouts from four thirty pm until
the event our house.
Speaker 5 (39:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Were were they on drugs at the time?
Speaker 8 (39:19):
I'm not too sure at the time, but I believe
the main go involved in our case had.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (39:27):
Yeah, yeah, I'd been doing drugs for at least three days. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
So you find out this to seventeen year olds have
been arrested. What you're feeling at that stage, is there
anger and are you how are you feeling when you
hear that they've been arrested? Is it like thank God?
Or is it like I want to know who these
fuckers are.
Speaker 8 (39:51):
It's gonna sound funny to say, but I don't I
think I thought a lot, to be honest, I think
I was just so numb back then that like I
wasn't any feeling about anything, and I just.
Speaker 5 (40:03):
I don't know. I suppose I just.
Speaker 8 (40:07):
Trying to absorb what was happening for you know, the
girls and I and Emma, and I didn't really think
a lot about anything else. I suppose in some ways,
maybe I was glad they got they were caught, I suppose.
Speaker 4 (40:17):
And.
Speaker 8 (40:20):
Didn't surprise me they I suppose they were, you know, youths.
Speaker 5 (40:25):
But I don't know.
Speaker 8 (40:29):
I don't I don't think I really felt angry. I
suppose I'm not genuinely like an angry sort of person.
And even now, like I I struggled to feel anger
towards them, you know, I don't know. I understands really
like bizarre at center to feel. But most people would
be like, oh, you know, like you if you had
a if they were in a room alone. You know,
(40:51):
what would you do that? I suppose that's not me
and I just I don't know, like maybe that Yeah,
I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't It's
a fount. Like I said, I didn't at the time
feel anger.
Speaker 5 (41:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
So I wanted to find out more about how this
type of social housing works, what it's used for, and
can we or should we know if one of those
houses is down the road from our house now. A
residential care house in Australia refers to a type of
accommodation where young people, often those who are at risk
or vulnerable, are provided with care and supervision. These houses
(41:32):
are typically part of the child protection and welfare system
and are designed to provide a stable living environment for
children and adolescents who can't live with their families due
to various reasons like neglect, abuse, or family breakdowns. In Queensland,
regulations governing residential carehouse fall under the broader framework of
(41:52):
Child Protection and out of home care services. These regulations
are managed by the Department of Children, Youth, Justice and
Multicultural Affairs. There were some interesting stats that were given
as part of a you into residential care in twenty
twenty three. On the thirtieth of June twenty nineteen, there
were nine hundred and fifty one children who were being
(42:14):
cared for in residential care services. By June thirty of
twenty twenty three, this number had almost doubled to seventeen
hundred and sixty three people. The needs of children and
young people living in residential care are different to the
needs of children and young people living in family based care.
Children and young people in residential care are more likely
(42:36):
to experience significant disability or mental health concerns. They've either
experienced physical and or sexual abuse, and can be disconnected
from pro social relationships, including families and schools. It makes
sense that we need this sort of support for our
young people who can't live with their parents for whatever reason,
and it also makes sense that these locations aren't made
(42:58):
public giving the nature of some of the young people
that are housed there.
Speaker 5 (43:05):
Now.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
On purpose, in this podcast, we've decided not to look
at the politics around the ticking time bomb that is
youth crime. However, we have linked in the show notes
the current pledge from the Queensland government on the one
point two to eight billion dollars they plan on spending
to tackle the issue. As mentioned, we have reached out
to the current Premier's office and we had no response
(43:25):
prior to releasing this show. In the next few episodes,
we're going to move between the story of what happened
to Lee and his family and Aaron and Christine's story
about how you pick up the pieces when something like
this tragedy happens, but also we're going to try to
understand what some of the answers might be. We're going
to hear from police who are on the front line.
They're going to do this anonymously as they didn't want
(43:47):
to go on record. We actually did ask police for
an official statement, however, they've decided not to come on
the podcast. We're going to hear from people behind the scenes,
working with both youth in this state and in other
states who have used what's happening in Queensland as a
bad poster boys story to not let it happen in
their date in Australia. I'd like to finish this episode
(44:08):
with Aaron and Christine who are on the way to recovery.
They moved house, they installed security and Aaron had a plan.
It included a baseball bat under the bed. Lots of
people told Aaron that he wouldn't need that baseball bat.
It would be unlikely that this would ever happen again, until,
of course it did.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
We heard the noises coming from the garage, and I
had this wonderful, great plan that I'd worked up with
my psychologist stuff the incident, that if it ever happens again,
I'm going to grab the baseball bat. I'm going to
check the lock on the door as working, and I'm
going to phone Triple zero and I'm going to tell
the people who pick up the call that I've been
involved in a violent home invasion previously, and I don't
(44:51):
need the police to come straight away. I don't know
what happened in my mind at that point in time,
but I did exactly the same thing as what I
did in the first incident. And I've got up and
I've raced out, opened the door and raced down the stairs.
And then there's the police. They said that they've had
people in your home. They've been doing a bit of
a spray around the neighborhood. I asked them how they
(45:14):
got in. They see the garage door was up, and
then we started to look around the house and all
kitchen drawers are open and inside bedroom door.
Speaker 4 (45:23):
Yeah, there was blood up the staircase, so yeah, up
the staircase to our bedroom.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
So who knows whether they had tried the lock and
couldn't get in.
Speaker 4 (45:37):
Seems potentially likely.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
I mean, that was you know, retriggering the trauma again.
But you know, the lockworks, the lockworks,
Approche production.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
In the last episode of Who's to Blame, we heard
one of the seventeen year olds that had broken into
Leon Emma's house and killed Emma on Boxing Day in
twenty twenty two had done this before. The only main
difference was that the time before no one died. Aaron
and his wife Christine continue to tell their story.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
This Sunday night, we went to bed and it happened
the wee hours of Monday morning, about twelve thirty ish. Yeah,
it was a really quiet weekend actually because we were
actually in lockdown, and it was one of those snap
lockdowns for COVID that had actually only been lifted at
four pm on the Sunday evening, So we had a
(00:52):
really quiet weekend. I think we're in bed at like
six or six thirty, like Jerry, a.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Trick hour distinct thing, really early to bed. Yeah, it
was just a quiet weekend.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I had got up to go the bars through and
so I hadn't quite fallen back to sleep, and then
I heard noises which I thought initially sounded like possums potentially,
and then the more I listened, the more it felt
like footsteps.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
And were you thinking those footsteps at the time, were
inside your house.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Or outside of your house?
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Inside our bedroom is on the top was on the
top floor of that house. You were awake, I think Aaron,
and so I was whispering to him, up, I think
someone's in the house.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Well, I think that's right. I mean, it's odd, isn't it.
The recollection we both had is my recollection was I
was whispering to you someone's in the house, because I
also heard some noises as well. But I don't think
the reality of someone being else was truly going through
my mind. You know, you sort of do hear noises
at night. I think I remember having a conversation reflecting
(02:13):
a little bit, thinking maybe it was an animal, because
at that point in time, I certainly didn't have any
fearful emotion going through my body. It was just a
bit of noise and just this old little conversation we
were having.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Had you ever talked about that prior, like in a
party with friends that had been broken into anything like that,
Had that sort of someone being in your house of
what do we do? Conversation ever happened between the two
of you.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
No, no, no, definitely not there was. There was definitely
no conversation I can tell there was definitely no battle
plan if we were confronted.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
With it, you know, to use my own experience, I
sleep with a baseball bat under my bed. I always
have for a long time. I've got a samurai saw
it in the cupboard. I don't know what I'd do
with either of them, to be honest, not that way incline.
But so you.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Didn't have any of that, didn't have it.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
We do now, but not none.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Of that because it was August.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
We're slate with our bedroom door open, because none of
the kids were living with it or were with us
at that stage.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
Which is great.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Well, the next thing in my mind was looking down
the end of the bed and then seeing the figure
of a person at the end of the bed, so
in the room. I don't think there was a lot
of thoughts from this point onwards other than the person.
(03:49):
I think I started to move and went out of
the bedroom, and then I jump up and in a
very loud I feel it was aggressive now telling someone
to get the f out of my house, and I
started chasing this person.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
It's a bit out of character for you, right, You're
not an aggressive guy.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Oh, entirely out of character. Yeah, no, really anti violence,
to be frank with her. So this reaction of mine,
I'm not sure where it came from. I spoken with
the police and a psychologist about it subsequent to try
and understand the reaction. Yeah, I understand. It's that typical,
you know, sort of vital flight scenario, and the brain
sho sort of sent me the message that I need
(04:31):
to do something about this, and I was conscious I
want to protect my wife, feeling were very vulnerable in
that situation.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Christine, what are you doing at this stage.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
I hadn't seen that there's a person in our bedroom
because I was looking at Aaron whispering I think someone's
in the house, So I didn't have that visual, so
I didn't really know how close they were. But Aaron
did get up and did start making a lot of noise,
(05:02):
like a lot of noise. I think you were also
stamping your feet. You were clapping your hands and like
really loudly, like it was quite loud for you know,
one am or whatever it was. Then Aaron yelled out
to me, Duhl, you need to call an ambulance. I'm
in real trouble. And I had no idea what had happened.
(05:24):
It was pitch black, but out of our bedroom there
was a landing and then there were like two steps down.
So in my head I went to maybe he's fallen
down the stairs, slipped and fallen down the stairs. And
with all the noise he was making, I couldn't hear anything,
you know, much else.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
He's either you know.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Really hurt his back or he's you know, split his
head open or something. And then I was kind of
trying to find the phone, and then he was starting
to crawl into the bedroom and then there was just
blood everywhere, and I was got onto the phone to
(06:06):
triple O.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
They say, what my memory is?
Speaker 4 (06:16):
What do you need?
Speaker 3 (06:18):
And I said an ambulance and they said what's happened?
And I said, we've had a home invasion and my
husband's been stabbed. And then they said we'll get the
police and the ambulance. And then they ask a lot
of questions about where the wound is, how many people,
which I couldn't answer.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
I never saw anyone.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Are you calm at this point.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Or are you I'm a mess, not crying, but I
remember just repeating that, repeating to them, please hurry, please hurry,
please hurry, and answering questions, but like, please hurry, let's
go to you.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
So we've heard Christine doesn't know what's happened. She knows
you're in trouble, that you've said. So what happens. You
get up, you stop your feet, you clap, You tell
this guy to get the fuck out of your house.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
I chased him, so I remember him then running and
he ran onto our balcony, so out of door, onto
our balcony. I sort of from memory sort of slowed
down and stopped at that point in time because then
I saw him sort of literally leap over the balustrade,
and I remember thinking at the time, this is a
problem for him. It was a big, big drop. Ultimately
(07:32):
ended up being a problem I heard in terms of
some damage to his legs. But it was then within
a split second, I just felt this massive pain in
the right side of my back and I clapsed the ground.
At that point in time, I felt I put my
right hand behind my back and felt it's like it
felt like a bit a piece of me to being
(07:53):
cut by a sharp knife that had just opened up.
And then I felt the blood and I felt my
body opened up and I didn't see the person, but
in my head. I knew I had been stabbed. I
knew it it stabbed, it was it was it was
an implement that had got me. And then I just
started crawling to the bedroom, back to Christine and connecting
(08:16):
the dots. That's when I said, called triple zero. I thought,
I said, I think I'm gone. But whatever, it was, whatever,
we both call it time. But yeah, I just remember
I couldn't walk, and yeah, I knew I was in trouble.
Speaker 5 (08:35):
It was a.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
The realization in life that you just have never had
before that for the first time, the frailty of your
situation was brought home immediately and fortunately I'm here.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Did you think that was the end?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah? Yeah, I for a bit there, I did, didn't. I.
I was just really worried about it. I just knew
I I knew I'd been stabbed. I had a realization
as to what had gone on. And there was a
lot of blund wasn't there. Yeah, it was crawling, so yeah, yeah,
(09:18):
I was. I was worried at that point. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
My memory is.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Like there were a lot of police, there were sniffer dogs,
streets were corded off, the police came in. I was
obviously scared to answer the door because I didn't know
who was in the house still after what happened to Aaron.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
But the Trevilo were great.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
They're like, the police will be knocking now, and I'm like,
how I know it's them, And so.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
That happened.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
So I was downstairs, took the police up to Aaron,
and then the ambulance.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Arrived very soon after.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
So then the police started kind of assessing Aaron. I
think ahead of the ambulance arriving, it was all just happening,
and you know, a bit kind of you know, you've
just woken up, you know, horrific things just happened.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
So yeah, I'm not.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Sure I can remember a great deal other than I
just wanted to be near Aaron. So the police wanted
to ask me what happened while I was outside of
the room, but I kept on wanting to go and
make sure Aaron was that you know, Aaron knew I
was around.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Are you worried for him at the start?
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Yeah, very worried, very worried.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
I do have one distinct memory when Triple O was
saying to me, let him line on the floor, get
him a pillow, and I remember thinking, you know, in
movies when people are saying stay with me, stay with me,
stay with me, I'm like, I don't actually want him
to get comfortable because I don't want to close I
(11:05):
don't want him to close his eyes because what happens
if he doesn't wake up? So it sounds awful that
I actually wanted him to be uncomfortable in the sense
that I wanted him to stay with me.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Not just light down a comfy pillow and go to
slap That will stick in my mind forever.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
So guessing you're there fairly quickly the.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Yeah, I do call them. I think I might have
a pair of box for sure, ripping them off doing
this assessment of me. Thankfully, they gave me some good
drugs that sort the pain. I do have a memory
of being in the ambulance and I remember there was
you were with me. I think, weren't you one of
(11:51):
the paramedics with one of the big needles. And by
this time I was under control because I was truly medicated,
and so I remember I remember asking the question what's
that for that long needle? And the response I got
These won't be the words, but it was something along
the lines if We're worried that the knife maybe impacted
(12:14):
your lungs and that we might have to break through
your rib cage to flat your lungs to get you
to the hospital for surgery. They just weren't They just
they didn't know what damage had been caused. Obviously at
that point in time. The rest of the little blurry
Christine better probably fill it in. But it was in
the emergency. I remember it was warm.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
You were taken into No, you were taken into a
I have these rooms in the hospital where you've been
in shock, heated assessment room to try and figure out
what damage and I think they did a scan in
that room to see what damage had been done.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Interns. I wasn't there.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
I had to sit outside, so I was in emergency.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
What do you learn after you get out of surgery?
What do you find out about your injury?
Speaker 1 (13:09):
That I was extremely lucky. The surgeon was a lovely
lady who came and gave me a post off briefing
that the knife had come in appeared to have come
in on an angle on the right side of my back,
sort of around the middle of my back, making a
significant flesh wound but missing the vital organs somehow nicked
(13:35):
my diafe from and my spine pulled it up so
up into my spine, so I look, I shocked, but
grateful that ultimately the end of the day it was
cleaning out a wound and you know, sewing me back
(13:57):
up again. And I was told at that point in
time that the guy was just extremely lucky and I
would recover.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
That weapon that was used. Was that from your home?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
No, they brought it in. Yeah, there was a lot
of sort of careful analysis done by the police on
that aspect of it, wasn't it.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah, they never found the weapon, but we had to
do a knife for it.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
There were obviously two offenders inside your house. Were there
others involved that you're now.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
A were of, Yeah, you're looking again. This is sort
of after required knowledge. So when you say obviously two,
we think just the two. We think the person who
put the knife in my back had been downstairs in
our garage because from recollection, you remember someone racing up
the stairs after I started chasing the first person out.
(14:53):
But we now know that there was a young fourteen
year old was it in the car out the front
of our house and that person was the driver.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
But that car was stolen.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Cover stolen had been your.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Stolin red Hell earlier that night.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
So there was a bit of a spree because oddly enough,
to divert just briefly, I was sitting getting my haircut
about twelve months ago, and for whatever reason, I am,
the hairdress was asking me where I lived and how
long I'd lived there, and I'd moved from a house
to house and why And I said that you really
want to know, and so I told him the reason why.
And there's this lady sitting next to me who turned
(15:34):
around and she said, you're not going to believe this,
but the people that came into your house must have
broken into my house just prior to you. Because the
police told me how lucky she was because the next
person they broke into got stabbed. It was that same
night at that same time. It was an unreal to
me having that conversation. So, yeah, we learned a lot.
(15:57):
How much of the whole possible we've put together, They
don't know, the police will know a lot more, but
I mean they were wonderful, but they sort of you know,
at one point I wanted to look at the file,
and they certainly encouraged me not to do any of that.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Yeah, listening to Aaron and Christine tell their story, it
sounds so familiar to Lee's story. And these aren't the
only two stories like this. We've heard it so many
times before from an international rugby player, Tottai Kfu and
his family members who were stabbed in cooper U.
Speaker 6 (16:32):
Dozens of police officers swarmed this suburban street in Coopero,
only to find out it was home to one of
Australia's rugby grates. Tottai Kefu had been stabbed trying to
protect his family in an alleged home invasion.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
He suffered serious wounds to his abdomen, while his wife,
Rachel was significantly injured on her arm.
Speaker 6 (16:53):
Police alleged mister Kefu's wife was confronted and threatened with
a knife, demanding she hand over khakeys in the alleged robbery.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
The two adult kids were also slashed, and a name
who tried to help was assaulted outside.
Speaker 6 (17:07):
One of the alleged defenders, A fifteen year old boy,
was restrained by a neighbor until police arrived.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
One of the youngest teenagers was out on bail. Of
the time, three.
Speaker 6 (17:18):
Youths have been arrested. One of them, a fifteen year old,
is facing a string of charges, including four counts of
attempted murder.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
He also went on to allegedly commit more break ins
after he was arrested and released over the attack. But
for now, let's head back to Aaron and Christine. We'll
talk about the recovery process, not just the physical wounds,
but the emotional toll it takes on mental health as
well as the changes had happened after Aaron was.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Stabbed significantly in the sense that we've now got security comers,
which we never had. We do have an alarm system
that when the kids aren't home, we can alarm the
whole house and go to sleep, So and that was
particularly useful for us in the immediate after Martha, and
(18:06):
we're still quite traumatized.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
We've got a lock in our bedroom.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Door, so we actually lock ourselves in our bedroom every night.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Yeah, that was the biggest thing. I think for me,
it was going to be just having that lock on
the bedroom door and a program in my head that
I developed with a psychologist over a period of time
after the incident about what would happen if I'm confronted,
Because again, now psychologist is such a lovely lady. I
just I'm so entirely grateful for the work that she's
(18:39):
done to help me get to where I am now.
But she did promise me lightning doesn't strike truce and
would never have it again. But like you, Joe, I've
got I was encouraged to have a baseball under my bed.
You know, we talked through the scenario over this unlikely
event the alarm doesn't go off, the lock on the
door gets penetrated, that they happen to just smash in
(19:00):
the bedroom door because that's locked as well. What's your
next thing? And I said, I don't know, to get
a baseball back for the goasebook. Have a baseball bat
under your bed.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
And that was really to help us sleep at night,
because we had terrible periods of just not terrible, just
not being able to sleep at night. Any slight noise
would send your adrenaline through the roof and then you're
awake for hours afterwards.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
How long did you stay there before you get rid
of that house and leave.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
A long time? So that happened in the August. We
didn't sell, we bought this place. We're currently in the
February but so we had We did look at a
few apartments because I thought maybe apartment living, you know,
there's a few more stages of security to get through.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
Couldn't really easily find something.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
But I think we're both so traumatized that I actually
couldn't get my head around having to move, and Aaron
was so sick that he was unable to do anything.
Really like weeks, Basically you're on a walking stick, then
you were eventually in a wheelchair.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
I was up.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
The only thing that really seemed to help your pain
was hot water bottles would take it away. So I'd
be up four or five times a night until I'd
hear him groaning when the water bottle would wear off,
and so I'd get up again. And so that was
probably the first six weeks when he was out of hospital.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
So this is the physical aspect of what happened to you.
The knife wound was more than a flesh wound, but
equally didn't puncher any major arteries or anything like that, which,
as you said, very lucky about.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yeah, that was the thing that sort of surprised me
a little bit. So I recovered from the surgery pretty well.
I came back home early. Things The first few days
were going pretty well. I was on pain medication, of course,
but pretty early on I was getting a lot of pain,
(21:10):
and you know, the doctors were telling me it's normal
to have a lot of pain after a traumatic event
like this, so I was putting it down to that.
But it was just getting worse and worse. As Christine said,
I had to start just using a walking stick to
move anywhere, progressed to a wheelchair. I was up all night.
(21:33):
The pain was just getting increasingly worse. And again I
was going to physio and doctors, and I was told, no,
this is a recovery. You know, these are pains for
your recovery. And I look back in hindsight to be
once the JA I think to myself that I should
have just raced a hospital a lot earlier than I did.
But it got to a point where it was just unbearable.
(21:56):
So this period that we're talking about now, with this pain,
I couldn't deal with anything other than the physical pain.
At that point in time, I was seeing a psychologist
who was helping me out with the event, but even
then I couldn't really deal with the event. I was
in awful, awful pain, and so dealing with the event
(22:17):
came a little bit down the track once I figured
out with the pain that it was actually an infection
that got into my bone, and so by the time
we got to hospital and started to address that, at
one point I was told that I was very close
to death from this. This is the second time, and
so Jay it was it was really dealing with that.
(22:40):
I look back now and just it was really the
physical pain until I got out of hospital the second time,
which I was in there for a month or so
and then came home. I'm under nursing care, you know,
with introvening, the strip of dripping antibotics just sitting above
my heart. And then once I got over all of that,
(23:01):
it was then I was able to start to reflect
on emotional trauma of it. I spent a lot of
time with my psychologist who said to me at one
point in time that the only way to move forward
with all of this is we need to start to
talk about it, and we need to walk through what
happened in as much detail as you can, which I
started to back then with my psychologist and it was
(23:23):
just so helpful because she helped me unpack it. She
helped me understand a lot of things, including that these
young offenders who came into our house, we're not there
because they necessarily want us to do harm to Christine
and I. It wasn't about that. It wasn't a bandetta
about us. They were on a spree and our house
(23:44):
they happened to get into, and you know, they had
a violence. They had violence as part of their response
to anything that goes wrong once they enter our house.
So once I'd unpacked it, and I think once we moved,
because I was sort of waking up screaming, wasn't I
at the other place impact it? You know, After a
(24:06):
period of a few months, I started to realize that
the best thing that I can do is talk to
people who want to talk to me about it, And
most psychologists said that's probably the best thing to help
you get over it and avoid a late nonset of
PTSD on the track. And so I've just taken the
approach now, friends, family, people who I deal with, clients
(24:29):
even who have taken an interest in all of this,
and colleagues in the law industry, and I'm very very
grateful for many of them who want to talk a
talk and hence, you know, yourself asking do you want
to come and have a chat today about this, and
more than open to do.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
So.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
This is sort of early twenty twenty two. You're starting
to feel like yourself again. Your body healing, your mind
is healing, You're dealing with help about how you navigate
some of the trauma that you've gone through both.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, early twenty twenty two started to feel like I'm
moving forward again in my life, just with all of
those things that you've mentioned.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Those boys are arrested some period from within.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
So the police were great. They kept us informed fairly
consistently along the way because I wasn't able to identify them.
It was a circumstantial evidence case for the police with
the difficult cases, but they did a wonderful job. You know.
They managed to get some camera footage from our street
(25:42):
where the car left after they came into our house,
and then they were able to put together a whole
bunch of footage and other types of evidence to ultimately
find them, and then some other things. And so I
was very surprised at how quickly I think arrests were made.
I think arrests were made within maybe weeks some months. Yeah,
(26:06):
I was surprised because I wasn't able to identify them,
so I wasn't able to assist, which was disappointing for me.
But it was dark, the clothing seemed dark that they
were wearing. I couldn't identify facial features.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
And then you've got all the trauma around it too.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
All the trauma and that difficulty identifying DNA and then
but look, I couldn't speak more highly about the police
and the case they put together and the charge that
they brought were attempted murder charges, and I was very
grateful that they chose to bring charges that I thought
accurately reflected the nature of the crime.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Were you able to attend the court when those two
boys were convicted?
Speaker 1 (26:46):
So the first boy went to court When we were
overseas in twenty twenty two, we had a long planned holiday,
and after finding out that that's when the sentencing hearing
was set down for, we made a deliberate decision not
to cancel holiday and not to fly back to simply
(27:07):
attend a court process. We'd love to have been there.
I did a victim impact statement, yeah, which I it
was really just trying to explain to the offender the
impact that this crime has had on myself and my
wife and our lives. So trying to get through to
(27:27):
someone who is going to be sentenced and where the
victim impact statement is something that you know, the judges
do take into account. And the second offender was I
feel about yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
So the yeah, we'll both charged with attempted murder.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
I understood they were, but before the matters went through
the sentencing process. So I got a call from the
former Director of Public Prosecutions here in Queensland and had
a challenging conversation, not challenging in the sense that was
challenging to how the conversation with him, but challenging in
(28:11):
the sense that he was doing his job and explaining
to me why the attempted murder charges couldn't be followed
through by the prosecution. The nature of the case was
such that it was going to be difficult to prove
those charges before a court to the criminal standard. All
that was explained to me, which I was very very
(28:31):
upset about because at that point in time, I think
I was going through a bit of an anger cycle
and my attitude was I would rather have a most
serious offenses to be put before the court and let
the court decide, because that's how I felt about the
(28:51):
matter in totality, that is that the charge I wanted
to reflect the impact on me in terms of the
nature of the crime. So I didn't have a choice
in it. And that's the way the prosecutorial system works,
you know, the prosecutors have to run the case before
the courts. But I was very, very disappointed to find
out ultimately the charges were downgraded to I'm awful lending.
(29:14):
But what that meant was just it just left a
really sort of, I don't know, deflated outcome for us.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
I mean, we looked quite angry.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
I remember being quite angry about the outcome of the
hearing while we were overseas we found out about the outcome.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
Bit of disbelief.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
And then anger at the second one where we went
and the contempt that was shown for the court by
the accused didn't show up for the first hearing. Just
couldn't care less, really was the impression I got, And
you know, very little consequences.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
Can I go to.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Christmas? How do you spend Christmas?
Speaker 3 (30:07):
We had Christmas here in our new place with all
the family, which was great, and then we went up
to the Sunshine Coast.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
Two days later.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
When do you hear about what happened to Lea and
Emma Lover? Do you remember that moment?
Speaker 3 (30:25):
I remember reading it on you know, your news feed
on my phone. I tried not to think too much
about it, to be honest, because I feel like we've
just done a lot of work to try and get
into the headspace that we were in.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
Very much needed a break.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Like the overseas trip was wonderful, but it did have
the sentencing, you know, that kind of martyred a little.
And overseas travel is different to just a holiday by
the beach. So I felt like we both needed a
holiday by the beach.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Yeah, me too. Yeah, I read about it. There's a
games of reflection on youth crime in the suburbs that
I didn't know anything about Tilliams and happened to us,
And it seemed, Joe, they just seemed to be in
my mind that things were just escalating. They just seemed
to be more of it, and so I was sort
(31:22):
of deeply saddened and upset by it. But at that
point in time, again it was just another really piece
of really sad news, and we were able to reflect
on it because we've been through it, and just in
a sense to feel very sad for the love of family.
But quite equally, I remember having a bit of a
reflection thinking how lucky I was to get through it
(31:42):
and that didn't happen to me.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
And when do you find out that one of the
boys that was in your house was the person that
killed Emma.
Speaker 5 (31:57):
I've had a lot of.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Contact from the media since my incident, off and on,
some of which I've engaged with. Others I haven't, but
I did take a phone call twenty seventh, wasn't that's
the next time the twenty seventh from someone from the media,
and the conversation went something along the lines of Aaron,
(32:27):
you might have heard in the media about the tragic
circumstances involving at a level, do you mind if I
mention a name to you, because we think in the
media that one of the individuals who was involved in
your matter was also involved in that. And so I said,
(32:47):
that's fine. And I was on the phone and the
journal mentioned this young person's name, and that was harrowing.
I just said to the journal, just give me a second.
I put the phone down and I said to my
(33:08):
wife journo has just put this name forward, and I
asked you your reflection on the name, and we were
both in agreement that having regard to the name, it
was the same person who was sentenced for offenses associated
with the crime against us. And I was able to
then say to the journalist that that name is the
(33:31):
same person. And that's when we found out, and that
then escalated in our minds, both from an emotional perspective,
and I was feeling very physically unwell about all of
this at the time, a lot of thoughts because having
found out about that day, that twenty seventh, it was unbelievable,
(33:55):
and not only unbelievable that it happened, because the same
person was involved, and we've just seen someone being sentenced
a month earlier, and here we go, someone's now dead.
I personally actually felt a little bit of guilt. Maybe
I didn't do enough, you know, going through my head
(34:18):
about the charges being downgraded to I'm awful wounding. It's
obviously impacted the sentence. Did I do enough to advocate
for some change that could have saved Emma? I don't know.
It just that was a very very difficult time, and
I've felt a lot of guilt about that. Can I
(34:39):
just say we're doing really well when that was harrowing
and backing it? But you feel a bit like it
all of the time. There's so much that goes on
in the media. I just I don't know whether it's
because we've been through this that I'm more alert to
youth crime and you know what gets reported in the media,
(34:59):
but I feel I'm just hearing it all the time.
So you never escape from the reminder of it all.
You just get better again sort of dealing with it.
But there are a lot of triggers that still go on.
It'll be years before we wake up one day and
we don't have a trigger about this.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Let's head forward a year and a bit later to
Emma and Lee Lovell's house in North Lakes when police
arrests two people and later charge them with murder. One
of them is the same boy that stabbed Aaron back
in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 7 (35:36):
And through some very good investigative skills demonstrated by the detectives,
they managed to locate four persons who were taken into custody.
I can say at this point in time that two
of those people or seventeen year old boy from Zornia
and a seventeen year old boy from Holland Park will
(35:56):
be charged later today with murder, attempted murder and break
an enter.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
When do you hear that they've arrested the two boys.
Speaker 5 (36:13):
That were in your house that night?
Speaker 8 (36:15):
I'm not really too sure to be on us. Like
I probably would have said it was like later on
that day. I think later on that day, like the
police came round and uh, a couple of detectives there,
So I think I would have found out there, But
I'm not exactly too sure, but it was probably the
next day, I'm guessing, you know a few hours later
I was told, cause I do know since then I
have found out that within you know, three or four hours,
(36:38):
and they'd got them at the house around the car
from us. Yeah, and how did they get the uh,
partly through sniffer dogs.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
I think.
Speaker 8 (36:48):
Maybe I think the police knew that there was a
a residential care house around the corner from us, and
so yeah, maybe they tried there and then there was
I think maybe a person that had answered the door.
And then while the while the police were talking to
the personal's door, I think they they had heard noises
in the back or something, so gone in and then
(37:09):
found the two people hiding under a blanket in another
bedroom or something.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
So so let's quickly talk about the residential care. That's
a place where I guess juveniles go or can go
on parole or where they've been not incarcerated and they're
looked after in a home of some descriptions.
Speaker 8 (37:28):
Yeah, I believe there's like different levels of you know
that the company that was running it, there's like different
care homes, and I think they have different.
Speaker 5 (37:37):
Levels of care. Like some of them.
Speaker 8 (37:39):
Some of the houses don't necessarily need to have like supervision.
Some have like intense supervision or such, you know. But
the house there around the corner, I know that there
should have been some supervision. But when I'm led to
believe the person doing that had gone on annual leave
and just left and then no one had taken their place.
Speaker 5 (38:00):
No one was monitoring that house, you know. So were you.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Aware that there was a residential care?
Speaker 8 (38:05):
No knew nothing about it now, So they try to
keep it quiet because some of the people in the
houses are dealing with maybe domestic violence issues or you know,
parental issues, and they don't necessarily want the parents or
other family members known where these houses are to come
and get the kids or whatever on a few teens whatever.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
These two boys are seventeen years old. Are they related
to each other? Not the mowhare of known and they're
both living in this residential carehouse.
Speaker 4 (38:33):
No.
Speaker 5 (38:33):
See, this is the thing. They should never have been there.
Speaker 8 (38:36):
While I've been told by the polices that they were,
they were both should have just been staying with their
own families in One.
Speaker 5 (38:44):
Should have been in Zilmia, one should have been in
Holland Park.
Speaker 8 (38:47):
But I believe that one of them was let out
on bail boxing day morning afternoon and instead of going home,
then got transport up to North Lakes along with the
other one and they were sported or they'd been at
that house from like four thirty pm that afternoon. The
(39:10):
police can track their whereabouts from four thirty pm until
the event our house.
Speaker 5 (39:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Were were they on drugs at the time?
Speaker 8 (39:19):
I'm not too sure at the time, but I believe
the main go involved in our case had.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (39:27):
Yeah, yeah, I'd been doing drugs for at least three days. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
So you find out this to seventeen year olds have
been arrested. What you're feeling at that stage, is there
anger and are you how are you feeling when you
hear that they've been arrested? Is it like thank God?
Or is it like I want to know who these
fuckers are.
Speaker 8 (39:51):
It's gonna sound funny to say, but I don't I
think I thought a lot, to be honest, I think
I was just so numb back then that like I
wasn't any feeling about anything, and I just.
Speaker 5 (40:03):
I don't know. I suppose I just.
Speaker 8 (40:07):
Trying to absorb what was happening for you know, the
girls and I and Emma, and I didn't really think
a lot about anything else. I suppose in some ways,
maybe I was glad they got they were caught, I suppose.
Speaker 4 (40:17):
And.
Speaker 8 (40:20):
Didn't surprise me they I suppose they were, you know, youths.
Speaker 5 (40:25):
But I don't know.
Speaker 8 (40:29):
I don't I don't think I really felt angry. I
suppose I'm not genuinely like an angry sort of person.
And even now, like I I struggled to feel anger
towards them, you know, I don't know. I understands really
like bizarre at center to feel. But most people would
be like, oh, you know, like you if you had
a if they were in a room alone. You know,
(40:51):
what would you do that? I suppose that's not me
and I just I don't know, like maybe that Yeah,
I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't It's
a fount. Like I said, I didn't at the time
feel anger.
Speaker 5 (41:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
So I wanted to find out more about how this
type of social housing works, what it's used for, and
can we or should we know if one of those
houses is down the road from our house now. A
residential care house in Australia refers to a type of
accommodation where young people, often those who are at risk
or vulnerable, are provided with care and supervision. These houses
(41:32):
are typically part of the child protection and welfare system
and are designed to provide a stable living environment for
children and adolescents who can't live with their families due
to various reasons like neglect, abuse, or family breakdowns. In Queensland,
regulations governing residential carehouse fall under the broader framework of
(41:52):
Child Protection and out of home care services. These regulations
are managed by the Department of Children, Youth, Justice and
Multicultural Affairs. There were some interesting stats that were given
as part of a you into residential care in twenty
twenty three. On the thirtieth of June twenty nineteen, there
were nine hundred and fifty one children who were being
(42:14):
cared for in residential care services. By June thirty of
twenty twenty three, this number had almost doubled to seventeen
hundred and sixty three people. The needs of children and
young people living in residential care are different to the
needs of children and young people living in family based care.
Children and young people in residential care are more likely
(42:36):
to experience significant disability or mental health concerns. They've either
experienced physical and or sexual abuse, and can be disconnected
from pro social relationships, including families and schools. It makes
sense that we need this sort of support for our
young people who can't live with their parents for whatever reason,
and it also makes sense that these locations aren't made
(42:58):
public giving the nature of some of the young people
that are housed there.
Speaker 5 (43:05):
Now.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
On purpose, in this podcast, we've decided not to look
at the politics around the ticking time bomb that is
youth crime. However, we have linked in the show notes
the current pledge from the Queensland government on the one
point two to eight billion dollars they plan on spending
to tackle the issue. As mentioned, we have reached out
to the current Premier's office and we had no response
(43:25):
prior to releasing this show. In the next few episodes,
we're going to move between the story of what happened
to Lee and his family and Aaron and Christine's story
about how you pick up the pieces when something like
this tragedy happens, but also we're going to try to
understand what some of the answers might be. We're going
to hear from police who are on the front line.
They're going to do this anonymously as they didn't want
(43:47):
to go on record. We actually did ask police for
an official statement, however, they've decided not to come on
the podcast. We're going to hear from people behind the scenes,
working with both youth in this state and in other
states who have used what's happening in Queensland as a
bad poster boys story to not let it happen in
their date in Australia. I'd like to finish this episode
(44:08):
with Aaron and Christine who are on the way to recovery.
They moved house, they installed security and Aaron had a plan.
It included a baseball bat under the bed. Lots of
people told Aaron that he wouldn't need that baseball bat.
It would be unlikely that this would ever happen again, until,
of course it did.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
We heard the noises coming from the garage, and I
had this wonderful, great plan that I'd worked up with
my psychologist stuff the incident, that if it ever happens again,
I'm going to grab the baseball bat. I'm going to
check the lock on the door as working, and I'm
going to phone Triple zero and I'm going to tell
the people who pick up the call that I've been
involved in a violent home invasion previously, and I don't
(44:51):
need the police to come straight away. I don't know
what happened in my mind at that point in time,
but I did exactly the same thing as what I
did in the first incident. And I've got up and
I've raced out, opened the door and raced down the stairs.
And then there's the police. They said that they've had
people in your home. They've been doing a bit of
a spray around the neighborhood. I asked them how they
(45:14):
got in. They see the garage door was up, and
then we started to look around the house and all
kitchen drawers are open and inside bedroom door.
Speaker 4 (45:23):
Yeah, there was blood up the staircase, so yeah, up
the staircase to our bedroom.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
So who knows whether they had tried the lock and
couldn't get in.
Speaker 4 (45:37):
Seems potentially likely.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
I mean, that was you know, retriggering the trauma again.
But you know, the lockworks, the lockworks,
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