The mother of Jade Young, a victim of the Bondi Junction stabbings, has described her daughter’s murder as the “stuff of nightmares” and the result of “years of neglect” within the mental health system.
Elizabeth Young told the New South Wales coroner’s court on Thursday that her words were “both a distillation and a manifestation of anguish”.
She said that it “hurt terribly” that her loving, clever, compassionate, thoughtful and “slightly goofy” daughter “no longer has the chance to be – to exist in the future”.
“At 74, I have lost my way in life,” Young told the court. “The moment he casually plunged that knife into Jade, our ordinary lives were shattered.”
Young was accompanied in court by her husband, Ivan, her son, Peter, and Jade’s husband, Noel. Elizabeth Young’s dog, Teddy, was also at the inquest. Family statements were given on the final day of the five-week coronial inquest.
Schizophrenic man Joel Cauchi, 40, killed Ashlee Good, 38, Yixuan Cheng, 27, Pikria Darchia, 55, Dawn Singleton, 25, Faraz Tahir, 30, and Jade Young, 47. He injured 10 others at Westfield Bondi Junction on Saturday 13 April 2024 before he was shot and killed by police officer Amy Scott.
Elizabeth Young remembered laughing with her daughter about washing a blanket, sending her a photo of a perfect fairy ring of mushrooms and her final emoji message in the days before she was murdered.
Jade had been shopping with her daughter at the time of the attack. Elizabeth said her granddaughter later drew “a plan of where mummy fell” in blue crayon.
“Pause and think on that,” she told the court.
Young described the coronial inquest as “harrowing” and said “some people lost sight of the truly awful fact that six people are dead”.
She said an accumulation of failures over many years led to Cauchi’s murderous attack.
Australia “doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge what happened was … categoric … years of neglect within our mental health system”, at state and federal levels, she said. “My daughter was murdered by an unmedicated chronic schizophrenic.”
Referring to the senior counsel assisting the coroner, Peggy Dwyer SC, she said: “Dr Dwyer referred to individuals doing their best in fallible systems.
“I’m sorry, but it seems to me that my daughter and five others were killed by the cumulative failures of numbers of people within a whole series of fallible systems,” she said.
Young said if the inquest led to increased mental health funding and better security arrangements, “all that would be good, but my daughter, my lovely, gentle daughter, is no more”.
“For me personally, no good will come from this inquest. She meant nothing to him, there is no comforting closure, there is no way to make amends for what he took from me.”
The coroner’s court heard Elizabeth Young couldn’t stand loud places, flinched at noise, startled easily, no longer listened to music or had flowers at home, slept badly, was anxious about social occasions and “dreads” Saturday afternoons.
She also criticised how some members of the media had covered the incident and reported on a memorial event less than a fortnight later.
Images of Jade’s body after the attack were widely shared, Young told the court. To think images of a woman lying dead were newsworthy “sickens me”, she said on Thursday. “I learned a new phrase in the days after April 13 – trauma porn.”
Peter Young, who lives in Hobart, said his sister Jade was murdered by a man who was “fuelled by his frustration [of] not finding a nice girl to marry – what a coward”.
Daniel Roff SC, the barrister for Jun Xing and Pengfei Cheng, read a statement on their behalf. Yixuan Cheng was their only child.
She was “thriving” as a student in Sydney, the court heard on Thursday. “We would speak with her almost every day and were so proud,” the parents said.
The last time they saw her was a month before her death.
“She was the most perfect person and no parent could want or need more,” Roff said when reading their statement.
On the day of the attack, Yixuan Cheng spoke to her mother on the phone. “I told her that her dad and I loved her [and] she told me that she loved us.
“Yixuan was the treasure of our lives … we aged overnight, our hair turned grey,” the couple said in their statement. “We never had the chance to tell her that being her mother and father were the greatest gifts.”
Muzafar Ahmad Tahir, the brother of Pakistani national Faraz Tahir, said that moving to Australia had brought his brother a “sense of security”.
“This country is very peaceful and provides many facilities for a better future,” he told the court. “None of us could have imagined that such a tragedy could have befallen him.”
Faraz Tahir was on duty as a security guard inside Westfield Bondi Junction at the time of the attack.
“His courage makes us immensely proud … he will always be remembered as a symbol of bravery,” his brother said, adding that it was a moment of immense pride when the prime minister called Faraz a “national hero”.
George Darchia, the elder son of Pikria Darchia, wrote a statement that was read in court.
His mother was “quiet but full of depth, observant, kind, strong … the kind of person who made the world turn the way she wanted it to”.
She had a dream that one day George and his brother would live with her in Sydney, the court heard.
“She loved this city, she believed in it … but I didn’t come. Now I live with the pain of that choice,” George Darchia said in his statement.
“Maybe I could have helped her avoid going to Bondi Junction on that fateful day. It’s not guilt in a logical way, it’s something deeper.”
The inquest, which began just over a year after the attacks, adjourned on Thursday.
It had examined potential failings in Cauchi’s healthcare, the preparedness of the shopping centre for an active armed offender and the response of the police, ambulance service and media.
• In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978. In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111. In the US, call or text Mental Health America at 988 or chat 988lifeline.org
