No trial for Mia’s killer

THE man who allegedly stabbed a Surfers Paradise waitress to death in a north Queensland backpackers won’t face trial after the charges were dropped yesterday.

Mentally ill Smail Ayad dragged 20-year-old British backpacker Mia AyliffeChung from her bed at the Home Hill hostel and stabbed her multiple times in August 2016, a Brisbane Mental Health Court heard.

Ms Ayliffe-Chung, a popular bar tender and VIP waitress at busy Surfers Paradise nightclub The Bedroom, had only recently arrived at the Home Hill hostel for mandatory farm work to extend her Australian visa.

The hostel manager tried to stop Ayad after the fatal attack, but was himself stabbed in the leg, the Brisbane Mental Health Court heard. Ayad then jumped headfirst from the first-floor balcony, sustaining neck and back fractures in the fall, before he got up and stabbed the hostel owner’s dog.

“This was an extraordinary action and I think, in the context of all this offending, points to how frightened he was and how ill he was,” Justice Jean Dalton said.

Ayad returned to the room where he killed Ms Ayliffe-Chung and repeatedly stabbed British backpacker Tom Jackson as he tried to help Ms AyliffeChung. Mr Jackson later succumbed to his injuries.

Justice Dalton discontinued criminal proceedings against Ayad after finding he was suffering paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the attack. Ayad, who had smoked up to four joints a day for years before the attack, was under the delusion that 50 local farmers and hostel staff wanted to kill him and would burn his body in a pizza oven.

“He thought that a cleaner at the hostel had told him he would be killed when he went to check out and he thought the owner of the hostel was making excuses as to why he couldn’t leave,” Justice Dalton said.

Four psychiatrists have assessed Ayad, who was initially charged with a raft of offences including two counts of murder.

Criminal proceedings against him were dropped after the court hearing but he will be detained in a mental health facility.

He will likely be repatriated to France.

Ms Ayliffe-Chung’s mother Rosie Ayliffe cried as she read her victim impact statement to the court.

“The tributes came from all over the world about how kind Mia was, how tolerant and full of love for everybody she met,” she said. “I am proud to have been her mother and I will hold her in my heart until I die.”