DEEP GRIEF LINGERS AS THE WORLD MOVES ON
ELIZABETH YOUNG
Five hundred days. August 26, 2025, marks 500 days since my daughter, shopping with her little girl alongside her, was murdered at Westfield Bondi Junction.
Five hundred days of a mother’s heartache.
Five hundred days my granddaughters have been motherless.
Five hundred days a husband has mourned his wife.
Five hundred days my son has grieved his Gehgeh.
Five hundred days of grief, bitterness and anger only five other families would understand.
I am a very private person; some may question my use of print media to reveal myself, but I fear our politicians and bean counters didn’t truly listen last year when I spoke about the parlous state of our mental health system. Perhaps people listened and nodded and agreed, but then turned the page, filed the story, switched channels? Perhaps they simply felt there were more important matters to attend to; what would a grandmother know?
Five hundred days, nothing has changed.
An unmedicated, unmonitored schizophrenic used his considerable intellect to research and plan what some called a tragedy and some a massacre. He chose his weapon, he chose his location, he chose the best time and eventually he chose my daughter, a mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, an architect.
I know many have experienced the lifelong sorrow of losing children, I know their pain, but there is something grotesque about the very public manner of my daughter’s death. To me there is something so antithetical to my beliefs, something obscene, tawdry, in a person’s last moments playing out on the floor of a shopping centre, no matter how glamorous the centre, dying among passers-by and onlookers, some of whom took photos; some who shared them. Jade, like me, was a private person.
A year later, for five weeks, as I sat in the Coroners Court at Lidcombe, I watched a series of witnesses describe what they knew, what they saw, what they did or didn’t do, what happened, what didn’t happen, where they were and, perhaps more important, where they weren’t.
I learned the history of the perpetrator; how, with support from medical practitioners and family, he had succeeded at university; I learned that he wanted what we all want, I suppose; acceptance, friends, a job.
I was moved by genuine reflections on how police and paramedics responded to what was a nightmarish situation. I sympathised with the police witness whose demeanour and words told of her regret for mistakes made. I sympathised with the ambulance witness who regretted not being able to do more, about inadequacies in systems.
I listened quietly as Inspector Amy Scott, with enormous dignity, recounted her actions that brought this nightmarish situation to a close.
I listened as some witnesses reflected on how things could have been improved upon; I listened as some seemed more intent on distancing themselves from any responsibility. I watched, sickened, as a couple of barristers boorishly smirked and shared notes when a certain response satisfied their particular agenda.
I understand the need for objectivity in such inquiries but on so many occasions, for five weeks, I wanted to stand up and remind the court that six people were murdered, 10 injured, many traumatised.
I wanted to point to the photo of Jade and her beloved pup we had placed in front of the court, I wanted to remind those involved that these were much loved, much valued people, flesh-and-blood people whose families now had to live on, broken, adjusting to the terrible absence in their lives.
Post inquest, my family members are adrift. We have lost more than our Jade. Despite hearing testimony of courageous acts, sincere regrets, recommendations for changes to procedures, we have lost a sense of trust, of faith in society’s foundational systems, with an accompanying negative impact on our mental health.
Flowers, genuine expressions of sorrow, a beachside vigil, condolences from a king and a pope, a proposed memorial, may help assuage society’s grief, but the pain, bitterness and anger my family lives with cannot be so easily mitigated. I cannot speak for the other five families but I hazard a guess they feel the same.
And so 500 days on from that awful day, this 26th day of August 2025, I want Sydney and Australia to remember six precious lives were taken by a man who, ultimately, was failed by one of our central support services, the mental health system that, ironically, my family now depends on to keep going.
As a result of a litany of failures, societal, systemic and human, six families must now learn to live with a latent, visceral grief while the rest of the world, appalled for a few days, moves on.