DAUGHTER ‘CRIED IN SLEEP SCREAMING FOR HER DADDY’
TEARS streamed down Sharni Mill’s face as she stared down three of the men who killed her “best friend” and former partner Greg Dufty.
Through the tears she spoke for five minutes about how the death of Mr Dufty had left her family, including their two young girls, at a loss.
“It’s hearing my daughter crying in her sleep screaming for her daddy,” she said.
“I wanted to tape it so I could hear what you had done to our daughter.
“It’s hearing Savanah’s response when somebody asks about her daddy. Her little voice shakes when she tells them her daddy is dead. Bad people killed him. She is only four years old.”
Lionel Patea, who pleaded guilty to Mr Dufty’s murder, and Nelson Patea, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter, both sat forward in their chairs as she spoke, listening silently.
Lionel Patea sat with his mouth open in shock.
At one point she addressed Aaron John Crawford, the man who planned the beating which killed Mr Dufty.
Crawford stared ahead and did not meet her eye.
Crawford described himself at one point as Mr Dufty’s “best friend”.
“Greg told me that if I ever needed help to call you and I did,” she said.
“You promised me you would help me find him knowing he would never be found.
“You walked into my house, you looked me in eye and lied to my face.
“You hugged me with the same hands you used to kill the man I loved just days earlier.
“You told me it would be OK knowing it would never by OK again.”
Outside court, Mr Dufty’s mother, Margaret Dufty, read a short statement from the family.
She said they felt justice had been served as the three main offenders in the matter had been sentenced.
“The process to get us to this point has been a long and painful one,” she said.
Mrs Dufty thanked police for their work on the case.