Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
‘I go to sleep every night repeating the death of my father’
The heartbroken daughter of a man who was killed by a torturer broke her silence over his death today — saying: “I go to sleep every night repeating my father’s death.”
Lara Taylor, 17, has revealed her heartbreak over the death of her dad Nigel just over a year ago.
Mark Anderson (pictured inset) was jailed for nine years in February for culpable homicide after admitting holding Mr Poustie hostage, hitting him with a baseball bat and pouring boiling water over his head.
Lara was just 16 when she had to make the harrowing decision to switch off her dad’s life support machine in hospital, just hours after he’d been admitted when found injured in a Menzieshill street. The former St John’s Academy pupil has spoken out about how her dad’s death has caused her “so many mental, emotional and physical problems”, adding: “I’m not OK. I’m a young girl who’s going to have to grow and have to tell my children that their grandad died because of someone else’s doing. “I go to sleep every night repeating my father’s death. I am always thinking about why Anderson did it. “I keep thinking if it hurt my dad when he went. I wonder what would’ve happened if I didn’t turn off the life support.” Lara says her final year at school became a “write-off” as she struggled to cope with what had happened. Lara first became aware of her dad’s plight when an appeal by police revealed the injured man had been wearing a tammie hat, “which my father always wore”.
She continued: “When I first walked in and saw him attached to all those tubes it was one of the most horrible things I’ve ever seen.
“I still remember saying, ‘daddy, wake up’. Then I collapsed, my family had to drag me out to the family room. One of the doctors came in and advised us that my father was brain dead.
“I was next of kin and had the decision whether to keep the life support machine on. I advised them to turn it off, he couldn’t breath for himself.”
Lara, a retail assistant, said the period after making the decision felt like “an eternity”.
She said: “When I went back in after that decision I started to look at my dad and think, ‘who is this man?’ He was all bruised and blue — I was actually scared of him.”
Lara said she will always have a part of her dad with her as she keeps some of his ashes in a locket.
She said: “I hear Mark Anderson has a daughter and I wonder if he realises how much pain he has put me through — I’m still receiving counselling. I’m now back in employment and scheduled to start college after the summer.
“When I went to Anderson’s sentencing I remember saying, ‘I hate you so much’ and he looked at me with a smirking face. I started to cry.
“I’ve kept all the stories of my father’s death and I still read them to try to understand what has happened. I will have to realise my father will never walk me down the aisle or meet his grandkids.”