Queensland double stabbing
Mystery surrounds a double fatality in the quiet Queensland village of Alva Beach
SLEEPING ON THE COUCH OF HIS parents’ house in the sleepy coastal village of Alva Beach in North Queensland in the early hours of Oct. 1, teenager Dean Webber’s life changed forever when a screaming and injured Candice Locke banged on his door after being chased by a group of men. “Don’t let them get me,’’ the 29-year-old RSPCA worker reportedly told Webber. “They’re bad people.”
After hiding the injured woman in his kitchen and calling triple-0, the 19-year-old locked the doors and windows, turned off the lights and cowered in the darkness. But after some of the men allegedly tore the door off its hinges and forced their way into his family home, the terrified Air Force cadet picked up a small kitchen knife and put himself between Ms Locke and the intruders.
In the events that followed, local father-ofthree Corey Christensen, 37, and Ms Locke’s reported long-distance boyfriend Tom Davy, 27, were fatally stabbed, while a third man fled the scene. “If you saw it on a horror film you’d scarcely believe it. It’s like something out of
Romper Stomper,” a source told the Courier
Mail newspaper. “She’s a victim, she’s done nothing wrong. He’s sitting at home alone and suddenly is in this living hell. What is bizarre and unexplained is why these men are so viciously hunting the two of them.’’
An injured Webber, an apprentice fitter at a nearby prawn farm, was taken into police custody but was released without charge on Oct. 2, while Ms Locke, who underwent surgery for a dislocated shoulder at Townsville Hospital, is said to be inconsolable.
Struggling to come to terms with the shocking incident, a devastated Webber told
police he watched the NRL grand final with friends and was asleep on the couch at his family home when he heard banging on the front door shortly after midnight. He initially “thought it was a ploy to get him to open the door for a home invasion”, a source close to the investigation told the Courier Mail. However, when he saw Locke, the daughter of Townsville businessman and former Cowboys star Martin Locke, begging for help with a dislocated shoulder, he ushered her inside.
The brunette said she’d been at a grand final party at the beach next to the Ayr surf club a short distance away and told Webber she had been “pushed off” a quad bike while riding on the beach, assaulted and chased by drunken men who wanted to stop her from seeking medical help. Webber, who had never met the men or Ms Locke, called for an ambulance and was transferred to Ayr Police Station, where a solo police officer told him he was unable to leave the station and to “see how it played out”.
The teenager redialled triple-0 and left the line open, following the operator’s instructions to lock the doors and windows, pull down the blinds and turn off the lights. Webber told police how he and Ms Locke cowered in the darkness while three men threatened the pair, bashed security screens and kicked the doors. They eventually left the scene but returned with up to seven men before tearing off the screen door and forcing their way into the home. “We’ve got you now, you little p---k,’’ one man reportedly said as he grabbed the teen by the throat and threw him to the ground.
Terrified, Webber “flailed about with the knife in the dark” to defend himself and Ms Locke from the intruders. “He couldn’t see anything, so he didn’t know he had even stabbed anybody, let alone killed them, until he saw the blood on his hands later,” a source told The Australian. When police arrived at the scene, they found the bodies of Davy and Christensen outside the home on Topton Street around 12.30am. A “psychological mess”, Webber gave detectives a walk-through interview last week before he was taken away by his family to a secret location to recover from the horrific incident, which has sent shockwaves through the sleepy north Queensland fishing hamlet as the police and the families of the dead men search for answers.
“We want to find an answer for the loving people that have been killed and for what reason,” Christensen’s heartbroken widow and the mother of his three young sons, Jaye, said outside Ayr Police Station on Oct. 5. “Unfortunately not all the pieces are falling into place and the answers for the truth of what actually happened may be with Corey and Tom.” She added that her husband was a kind, gentle man. “Anybody who knew Corey loved him, our boys are so lucky to have the most amazing dad anybody could wish for,” she said.