Ve boy D FOR
Next, I called the police, but they couldn’t disclose any information.
‘We’ll have to get back to you,’ they told me.
It just can’t be true,
I thought.
When they did phone back, I was told an of cer would visit me. It wasn’t until he arrived two hours later that I believed Robbie was really gone.
My heart shattered into a thousand pieces.
The of cer explained Robbie had been stabbed and killed during a farewell party he’d thrown for his friends. He’d been in his own home. He was just 22.
I learnt that, during the get-together, a 17-year-old girl had grown agitated after drinking.
Robbie, always wanting to help, had calmed her down.
But she’d fetched a steak knife from the kitchen.
Plunging the blade into Robbie’s neck, causing a 9.5cm deep wound, she severed his jugular and punctured his lung.
Robbie’s friends rushed him outside to wait for an ambulance. But he died on the driveway before they arrived.
My sweet boy had been killed for being kind.
Calling Stevie-Marie the following day, she was completely heartbroken.
Over the next year, I tried to be strong, but there were times I didn’t know how I could go on.
In October 2019, Robbie’s killer, who can’t be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
The court heard that, drunk and agitated, she had assaulted her boyfriend several times that night. And, true to his nickname, my son had spent the evening tending to her.
During the party, a male voice, possibly Robbie’s, was heard to cry, ‘She’s grabbed a knife!’
Then, she stabbed Robbie, causing him to bleed out.
Defence lawyer, Mike Dalton, told the court the girl had a history of PTSD, borderline personality disorder and anxiety.
At Cairns Supreme
Court, she was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in detention.
That’s not enough for my son’s life, I thought, furious.
But at 17, Robbie’s attacker was sentenced under Queensland’s Youth Justice Act 1992, which states ‘a child should be detained in custody… only as a last resort and for the least time that is justi ed in the circumstances.’
That’s why I’m calling for laws around older children’s sentencing to be changed, so there are automatically greater consequences for taking a life or committing a violent crime.
Now, three years on, I think of my boy every day.
His friends tell me they still hear Robbie’s words in their heads, too, as he was always encouraging them to do their best.
By adopting his carefree attitude, I’ve learned not to dwell on things I can’t change and to nd joy in small things. I’m determined to live a life my boy would be proud of. ●
I think of
Robbie every day