‘Heart of gold': Tributes flow for young Wurundjeri father killed in north Melbourne home
A young father has been identified as the man killed inside a home in Melbourne 's north on Monday.
Will Austin, 28, was found dead inside a home on Mitchell St at Glenroy, hours before another young man was charged with his murder near the NSW border.
'Will was a Wurundjeri warrior taken tragically,' his father, Bill Nicholson, told 7NEWS.com.au.
'He lived his life with his Wurundjeri culture and family from a strong blood line who continue sovereign responsibility from our ancestors to care for the land, community, and keep culture strong.'
The Wurundjeri elder said he was 'frustrated our young people are still dying in violence'.
'My son was strong and our mob will never forget him,' Nicholson said.
Family members also paid tribute to Austin on social media, with relative Ky-ya Nicholson Wards noting that Austin had been optimistic about his future when she saw him in the days before his death.
'It doesn't feel real,' she wrote.
'You had a heart of gold and we could always still see the real you through the demons you were fighting.
'Thank you for bringing baby Jordy into this world, I will always protect him, and guide him though life. He will always know who his daddy was.
'I hope your soul is resting with all of our family and old people. Gone too soon my brother, you will be missed 'til the day we meet again.'
A 23-year-old was arrested in Albury on Monday afternoon, and on Tuesday faced Albury Local Court where Victorian detectives applied for his extradition.
He did not apply for bail and was extradited from Albury to Wodonga. He is set to face Melbourne Magistrates Court on Wednesday.
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7NEWS
2 hours ago
- 7NEWS
Coward punch victim Dave Harcus died one month after sent home from hospital with Panadeine Forte. His loved- ones want answers
The loved ones of a 'charismatic, hilarious' Cooper Pedy man believe systematic failures led to his death. Dave Harcus died one month after he was coward punched at a land auction in remote SA, and sent home from the hospital with no more than a packet of Panadeine Forte. The blow from behind knocked the 54-year-old NDIS-recipient to the ground, where he smacked his head on the concrete. He had been walking out of the auction with his friend of nearly four decades, Karen Harvey, 62 — who said they left as soon as they realised they were out of the running. Everyone else remained inside as the auction proceedings wrapped up on February 4. Everyone except an old acquaintance with a years-old gripe with Harcus. Severe rheumatoid arthritis meant Harcus was shuffling slowly along the pavement when he was approached from behind. 'It happened so fast, he just came up behind him, punched him in the back of the head, and Dave just fell straight to the ground — didn't even try to put his hands down or anything because he didn't know it was coming,' Harvey told Back in the car, Harcus slumped forward in his seat — he was bleeding from the ear, had cloudy eyes, and was visibly in shock. Harvey said she would take him to the hospital, but Harcus insisted on heading home, where he would file a police report 'in case I die in my sleep'. 'I wasn't going to argue. You can't argue with Dave, I've known him for a long time,' Harvey said. She got a call from Harcus the next day — he was ready to go to the hospital. Harvey dropped him there and recounted the alleged assault to hospital staff, leaving with the assumption that Harcus would be kept overnight for tests, or flown down to the Royal Adelaide Hospital. But she said there were no CT scans, or referrals, just a packet of Panadeine Forte. Days later, Harvey drove him back to the hospital and, once again, Harcus left with only a script for Panadeine Forte. After that, Harcus declined Harvey's further suggestions that he go to the hospital, as his condition deteriorated. His speech had begun to slur when he told her: 'They'll just send me home with more Panadeine Forte.' Harcus did ask if Harvey could book him an appointment with a doctor, instead. The soonest they could fit him in was March 4, the day before he died. Harvey found her friend sweating, shaking and without any control of his bowels when she arrived that day to take him to the doctor. He was bedridden, unable to eat, drink, medicate, or take himself to the bathroom. Harvey said her friend had been alone in this state for days. 'It was heart-wrenching,' Harvey said. She called him an ambulance and told Harcus she would visit him in the hospital the next day, to drop off a policy number for the ambulance cover she would arrange for him in the meantime. But when she arrived at the hospital the next day, a nurse pulled Harvey into a kitchenette and told her: 'I'm really sorry, but your friend Dave passed away in the early hours of this morning.' 'Well, I nearly collapsed,' Harvey said. 'My heart started racing — it was horrible. They made me a cup of tea.' Tracking down the truth Harcus' niece and listed next of kin, Monika Addicott, only learned her uncle had been unwell when she received a call from the hospital three hours after he had died. The 43-year-old said she asked the doctor to give her all the details, but was not told about 'any kind of treatment or examination in the 12 or 13 hours that he was there'. 'They just basically said that he was very calm and very peaceful, and just kind of drifted off into sleep.' Addicott did not learn about the coward punch until she called a Cooper Pedy pub — she was trying to track down anyone who knew her uncle. 'That's when I was told about what happened (at the land auction),' Addicott said. Addicott remembers Harcus fondly, and recalled the time he insisted she come over and stay with him in Coober Pedy in her early 20s, so that he could teach her the value of money and hard work. 'It certainly re-educated me. It gave me my values and an appreciation of what I've got,' Addicott said. At the time of his death, Addicott was living in public housing in Brisbane, where Tropical Cyclone Alfred was ripping through the region. She had to wait until the storm blew over before she could travel to her uncle's home and begin to sort out his affairs. Time slipped by upon her arrival, as she enrolled her child into a Cooper Pedy school, liaised with the coroner, cleaned through Harcus' home, and began to arrange a funeral which she can't afford until she fundraises $9000. 'Evidently, I've exceeded my absentee quota (for public housing), so they've evicted me,' Addicott said. Her friends are currently boxing up her belongings in her absence, and putting them into a storage unit. With so much already on her plate, Addicott said that she would have to cross that bridge when she gets to it. Pushing for further investigation SA Police confirmed to that it is satisfied the alleged assault is not connected to Harcus' death — his loved ones were told he died of a heart attack as a result of a sepsis and pneumonia. It's a diagnosis that still doesn't sit right with Addicott, or Harvey, who watched her friend rapidly deteriorate seemingly from the moment he was hit. She believes gaps in clinical care may have contributed to a causal chain of events that led to her friend's death. Having been twice-prescribed just Panadeine Forte following the assault, Harcus did not believe treatment beyond pain relief was available to him, and died unaware of the severity of his condition, Harvey said. Given Harcus' recent medical history, Harvey believes that if a CT scan ruled out head trauma as a source of his symptoms, then he should have received further holistic assessment to rule out any complications before it was too late. 'For nearly a year, Dave had an infection in his stomach, and he was going to the hospital every second day to get the wound cleaned,' Harvey said. 'Then he went to Adelaide and had an operation and fixed it all up. This was just before everything else went down.' Harvey and Addicott have since pushed for a further investigation into the death, and the SA Coroner's Office told 'The coronial investigation into this death is ongoing.' Because of this ongoing investigation, the hospital was also able to comment on the claims made by Harvey, when contacted by 'Our condolences go to the friends and family of Mr Harcus for their loss,' Eyre and Far North Local Health Network chief executive officer Julie Marron told Following Harcus' death, Harvey followed up with police on their progress in pressing assault charges. She claims it was only then that police 'caught up' with a suspect. A man has been charged with assault and faced Coober Pedy Magistrates Court May, after receiving a summons. The matter was adjourned until late July. 'Everybody was just drawn to him' Addicott described her uncle as an enigma, and recalled the excitement she felt when he would rock up on her doorstep after a prolonged period out of touch. This is exactly how he arrived on her wedding day. 'All throughout my life, that's exactly how he was. You wouldn't hear from him, and then he'd just somehow find ya, and just say, 'G'day!',' she said, adding that he surprised her in this way on her wedding day. Harcus was just 11 years older than Addicott, who said he was 'more like a big brother than an uncle'. He lived with his pet chihuahua, Nigella, a continuation of the tradition — his parents also lived with chihuahuas. Addicott has now adopted Nigella. 'Uncle was the most charismatic, funny, smart man that you could ever possibly come across,' Addicott said. 'Everybody was just drawn to him. He was just always coming up with some crazy idea ... some new way to do things.' Harvey described her late friend as a 'proud, honourable' person and 'a very loyal friend'. 'He was just a good person, he had a very good heart. 'Just an example — my mother died in 2005, and I couldn't get all the funds together — Centrelink wouldn't help, and Mum didn't have any money or a will — and (Harcus) lent me the money to have her cremated. That's the kind of person he was. 'I went to pay him back when I had the money, and he wouldn't take it back.' Harcus had spoken about arranging his own will not long before he died, but never got around to it. Now, Addicott is struggling to pull together her own funds in order to lay Harcus to rest. 'I legitimately have zero way to pay for this ... meanwhile, Uncle lays there, waiting for me to do something ... and all I can do is cry, because I JUST. CAN'T. AFFORD. IT,' the GoFundMe said.
Perth Now
2 hours ago
- Perth Now
Key revelations from mushroom cook's testimony
The Victorian mother-of-two at the centre of a mushroom poisoning case had the opportunity to tell her own story this week as she took the stand at her triple-murder trial. Erin Patterson, 50, is facing trial after pleading not guilty to the murders of her husband's parents and aunt, and the attempted murder of his uncle. Simon Patterson's parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson, died in the week after the lunch after falling ill from mushroom poisoning. Prosecutors alleged she deliberately poisoned the beef Wellington lunch on July 29, 2023, with death cap mushrooms intending to kill or seriously injure her four guests. Erin Patterson and her estranged husband Simon Patterson. NewsWire Credit: NewsWire Her defence, on the other hand, has argued the case is a 'tragic accident' and Ms Patterson also consumed the death caps and fell sick, though not as sick as her guests. Over five days this week Ms Patterson sat in the witness box about 7 m from the 14 jurors selected to hear her case, answering questions, firstly from her barrister Colin Mandy SC and then from Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC. Her opportunity to tell her own story came after the jury spent five weeks hearing from more than 50 witnesses for the prosecution as Ms Patterson sat in silence at the back of the Morwell courtroom. Mushroom cook agrees death caps in lunch may have been foraged In her testimony to the jury, Ms Patterson conceded death cap mushrooms 'must' have ended up in the beef Wellington lunch she prepared and served for the four guests. The morning of the lunch, she told the court, she started to prepare the duxelles, or mushroom paste, by cooking down two punnets of fresh sliced mushrooms she had purchased from Woolworths. 'So, as I was cooking it down, I tasted it a few times and it seemed a little bland to me, so I decided to put in the dried mushrooms that I'd bought from the grocer that I still had in the pantry,' she said. A court sketch of Ms Patterson in the witness box on Monday. NewsWire / Anita Lester Credit: News Corp Australia Ms Patterson told the jury she had purchased a packet of dried mushrooms in April the same year from an Asian supermarket in Melbourne, initially intending to use them for a pasta dish but deciding against that because they had a strong flavour. She said she now accepts it was possible she had stored wild mushrooms she foraged from her local area and dehydrated in the same Tupperware container. 'At that time, I believed it was just the mushrooms that I'd bought in Melbourne … Now I think that there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well,' she said. Ms Patterson told the jury she first became interested in foraging for wild mushrooms during Covid and educated herself online. Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC is leading the case against Ms Patterson. NewsWire/ David Crosling Credit: News Corp Australia Over a period of months, she said she grew confident to identify 'field mushrooms and horse mushrooms' growing on her property before deciding to eat some. 'When I got to a point I was confident what they were, I cut a bit off, fried it up with butter, ate it and saw what happened,' she said. 'They tasted good and I didn't get sick.' Ms Patterson said she had purchased a dehydrator on April 28, 2023, to begin experimenting with preserving mushrooms because they had a short shelf life. Crown alleges photo shows Ms Patterson calculating 'fatal dose' Under questioning from Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC, Ms Patterson was taken to a photograph of sliced mushrooms on a dehydrator tray being weighed. The weight recorded was 280.0g and metadata from the photo showed it was last modified on May 4. Ms Patterson agreed the photo was 'likely' taken by her and contains her kitchen bench. Ms Patterson told the jury she loved mushrooms and would buy them one or two times a week. Supplied. Credit: Supplied Previously, the jury heard from mycologist Dr Tom May that the mushrooms pictured were 'consistent with amanita phalloides (death caps) at a high level of confidence'. Questioned on if she accepted the mushrooms pictured were death caps, Ms Patterson said: 'I don't think they are'. She also denied she had foraged these mushrooms in the nearby town of Loch on April 28 after seeing a death cap mushroom sighting post on citizen science website iNaturalist on April 18. Dr Rogers suggested the image recorded Ms Patterson weighing the mushrooms to calculate the 'weight required for the administration of a fatal dose'. 'Disagree,' Ms Patterson responded. The trial is being heard in the country Victorian town of Morwell. NewsWire / Josie Hayden Credit: News Corp Australia Mushroom cook tells jury she lied to health authorities because she was scared Ms Patterson said she first learned her in-laws had fallen ill the day after the lunch on a phone call with her estranged husband on July 30. The following day, she told the court, she attended the local Leongatha Hospital too seek treatment for gastro when the resident doctor, Dr Chris Webster, said 'we've been expecting you'. 'I think I said to him, 'Why? Why are you asking?', and he said that there's a concern or we're concerned you've been exposed to death cap mushrooms,' she said. 'I was shocked but confused as well … I didn't see how death cap mushrooms could be in the meal.' Crowds have lined up outside the court to sit in the public gallery. NewsWire/ David Crosling Credit: News Corp Australia Ms Patterson told the court she first began to suspect foraged mushrooms may have ended up in the lunch at Monash Medical Centre when Simon accused her of poisoning his parents. In his own evidence, at the start of the trial, Simon Patterson told the jury he did not say this to his wife. Ms Patterson told the jury on August 2, the day after her release from hospital, she disposed of her dehydrator at the Koonwarra Transfer Station. 'I was scared that they would blame me for it,' she said of the decision. 'Surely if you loved them (her in-laws) you would have notified health authorities about the possibility of the foraged mushrooms in the container?' Dr Rogers asked. 'Well I didn't,' Ms Patterson replied. 'I had been told people were getting treatment for possible death cap mushroom poisoning so that was already happening.' Erin Patterson appeared emotional at times on the stand. Brooke Grebert-Craig. Credit: Supplied Ms Patterson confirmed she did not notify anyone of her suspicions and lied to both police and health authorities in the following days by claiming she did not forage for mushrooms. She was taken to a series of messages exchanged with public health officer Sally Anne Atkinson, where Ms Patterson insisted the only mushrooms in the meal were from Woolworths and an Asian grocer. Asked what her state of mind was in relation to the Asian grocer, she said she 'still thought it was a possibility, but I knew it wasn't the only possibility.' Ms Patterson told the court she first learned of Heather and Gail's deaths as police searched her home on August 5 and continued to lie. 'It was this stupid knee-jerk reaction to just dig deeper and keep lying. I was just scared, but I shouldn't have done it,' she said. Simon's parents Don and Gail Patterson died a day apart in early August. Supplied Credit: Supplied Ms Patterson claims she vomited after deadly lunch Ms Patterson also told the jury she had long struggled with both her weight and relationships to food since childhood – describing it as a 'rollercoaster'. 'Mum would weigh us every week to make sure we weren't putting on too much weight … I went to the extreme of barely eating then to, through my adulthood, going the other way and bingeing,' she said. She told the court she had engaged in binge eating until she was sick then 'bringing it back up' since her 20s and no one knew. Erin Patterson legal team including Colin Mandy SC, Sophie Stafford and Bill Doogue. NewsWire / Luis Enrique Ascui Credit: News Corp Australia In the lead up to the July 29, 2023, lunch, Ms Patterson said she had been engaging in this behaviour 'two or three times a week'. She told the court that at the lunch with Don, Gail, Heather and Ian, she only ate some of her serving, but consumed about two-thirds of an orange cake after her guests left. 'I had a piece of cake and then another piece of cake and then another,' Ms Patterson said. 'I felt sick. I felt overfull, so I went to the toilets and brought it back up again.' Ms Patterson is expected to return to the witness box and continue giving evidence when the trial resumes on Tuesday.
West Australian
2 hours ago
- West Australian
Erin Patterson trial: Four takeaways from alleged beef Wellington poisoner's week in the witness box
The Victorian mother-of-two at the centre of a mushroom poisoning case had the opportunity to tell her own story this week as she took the stand at her triple-murder trial. Erin Patterson, 50, is facing trial after pleading not guilty to the murders of her husband's parents and aunt, and the attempted murder of his uncle. Simon Patterson's parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson, died in the week after the lunch after falling ill from mushroom poisoning. Prosecutors alleged she deliberately poisoned the beef Wellington lunch on July 29, 2023, with death cap mushrooms intending to kill or seriously injure her four guests. Her defence, on the other hand, has argued the case is a 'tragic accident' and Ms Patterson also consumed the death caps and fell sick, though not as sick as her guests. Over five days this week Ms Patterson sat in the witness box about 7 m from the 14 jurors selected to hear her case, answering questions, firstly from her barrister Colin Mandy SC and then from Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC. Her opportunity to tell her own story came after the jury spent five weeks hearing from more than 50 witnesses for the prosecution as Ms Patterson sat in silence at the back of the Morwell courtroom. Mushroom cook agrees death caps in lunch may have been foraged In her testimony to the jury, Ms Patterson conceded death cap mushrooms 'must' have ended up in the beef Wellington lunch she prepared and served for the four guests. The morning of the lunch, she told the court, she started to prepare the duxelles, or mushroom paste, by cooking down two punnets of fresh sliced mushrooms she had purchased from Woolworths. 'So, as I was cooking it down, I tasted it a few times and it seemed a little bland to me, so I decided to put in the dried mushrooms that I'd bought from the grocer that I still had in the pantry,' she said. Ms Patterson told the jury she had purchased a packet of dried mushrooms in April the same year from an Asian supermarket in Melbourne, initially intending to use them for a pasta dish but deciding against that because they had a strong flavour. She said she now accepts it was possible she had stored wild mushrooms she foraged from her local area and dehydrated in the same Tupperware container. 'At that time, I believed it was just the mushrooms that I'd bought in Melbourne … Now I think that there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well,' she said. Ms Patterson told the jury she first became interested in foraging for wild mushrooms during Covid and educated herself online. Over a period of months, she said she grew confident to identify 'field mushrooms and horse mushrooms' growing on her property before deciding to eat some. 'When I got to a point I was confident what they were, I cut a bit off, fried it up with butter, ate it and saw what happened,' she said. 'They tasted good and I didn't get sick.' Ms Patterson said she had purchased a dehydrator on April 28, 2023, to begin experimenting with preserving mushrooms because they had a short shelf life. Crown alleges photo shows Ms Patterson calculating 'fatal dose' Under questioning from Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC, Ms Patterson was taken to a photograph of sliced mushrooms on a dehydrator tray being weighed. The weight recorded was 280.0g and metadata from the photo showed it was last modified on May 4. Ms Patterson agreed the photo was 'likely' taken by her and contains her kitchen bench. Previously, the jury heard from mycologist Dr Tom May that the mushrooms pictured were 'consistent with amanita phalloides (death caps) at a high level of confidence'. Questioned on if she accepted the mushrooms pictured were death caps, Ms Patterson said: 'I don't think they are'. She also denied she had foraged these mushrooms in the nearby town of Loch on April 28 after seeing a death cap mushroom sighting post on citizen science website iNaturalist on April 18. Dr Rogers suggested the image recorded Ms Patterson weighing the mushrooms to calculate the 'weight required for the administration of a fatal dose'. 'Disagree,' Ms Patterson responded. Mushroom cook tells jury she lied to health authorities because she was scared Ms Patterson said she first learned her in-laws had fallen ill the day after the lunch on a phone call with her estranged husband on July 30. The following day, she told the court, she attended the local Leongatha Hospital too seek treatment for gastro when the resident doctor, Dr Chris Webster, said 'we've been expecting you'. 'I think I said to him, 'Why? Why are you asking?', and he said that there's a concern or we're concerned you've been exposed to death cap mushrooms,' she said. 'I was shocked but confused as well … I didn't see how death cap mushrooms could be in the meal.' Ms Patterson told the court she first began to suspect foraged mushrooms may have ended up in the lunch at Monash Medical Centre when Simon accused her of poisoning his parents. In his own evidence, at the start of the trial, Simon Patterson told the jury he did not say this to his wife. Ms Patterson told the jury on August 2, the day after her release from hospital, she disposed of her dehydrator at the Koonwarra Transfer Station. 'I was scared that they would blame me for it,' she said of the decision. 'Surely if you loved them (her in-laws) you would have notified health authorities about the possibility of the foraged mushrooms in the container?' Dr Rogers asked. 'Well I didn't,' Ms Patterson replied. 'I had been told people were getting treatment for possible death cap mushroom poisoning so that was already happening.' Ms Patterson confirmed she did not notify anyone of her suspicions and lied to both police and health authorities in the following days by claiming she did not forage for mushrooms. She was taken to a series of messages exchanged with public health officer Sally Anne Atkinson, where Ms Patterson insisted the only mushrooms in the meal were from Woolworths and an Asian grocer. Asked what her state of mind was in relation to the Asian grocer, she said she 'still thought it was a possibility, but I knew it wasn't the only possibility.' Ms Patterson told the court she first learned of Heather and Gail's deaths as police searched her home on August 5 and continued to lie. 'It was this stupid knee-jerk reaction to just dig deeper and keep lying. I was just scared, but I shouldn't have done it,' she said. Ms Patterson claims she vomited after deadly lunch Ms Patterson also told the jury she had long struggled with both her weight and relationships to food since childhood – describing it as a 'rollercoaster'. 'Mum would weigh us every week to make sure we weren't putting on too much weight … I went to the extreme of barely eating then to, through my adulthood, going the other way and bingeing,' she said. She told the court she had engaged in binge eating until she was sick then 'bringing it back up' since her 20s and no one knew. In the lead up to the July 29, 2023, lunch, Ms Patterson said she had been engaging in this behaviour 'two or three times a week'. She told the court that at the lunch with Don, Gail, Heather and Ian, she only ate some of her serving, but consumed about two-thirds of an orange cake after her guests left. 'I had a piece of cake and then another piece of cake and then another,' Ms Patterson said. 'I felt sick. I felt overfull, so I went to the toilets and brought it back up again.' Ms Patterson is expected to return to the witness box and continue giving evidence when the trial resumes on Tuesday.
