Two years after her son Nicholas was fatally stabbed on a Gold Coast footpath, Michelle Braid was told she had terminal cancer.
“But the terminal condition of grief that I have … after Nick’s death is far more shattering for me,” she told the Brisbane Supreme Court.
Mrs Braid broke down in court throughout her devastating victim impact statement as the woman who killed her 35-year-old son – Freedom Mona Maunsell Anderson – looked on.
Anderson, 23, was sentenced on Thursday for the April 2020 “senseless killing”.
After consuming alcohol and drugs, Anderson stabbed Mr Braid in the chest over a “petty grievance” outside a Surfers Paradise apartment building.
“She felt like he was lying to her about his name,” crown prosecutor Stephen Muir told the jury.
Mrs Braid had spoken to her son barely an hour before he was stabbed.
“He was upbeat, positive, loving as always. If I had known I would have kept him on the phone forever,” she sobbed.
After his death, Mrs Braid sent messages to her son’s phone number.
One evening there was a reply.
“My heart leapt with irrational hope,” she said.
However, it was just the phone number’s new owner responding.
“It’s hard not to lose hope when you lose a child,” Mrs Braid said.
“In my despair I have been searching for Nick everywhere. I thought I saw him on the street.
“I look longingly in the night sky but there is no answer, there’s no solace, there’s no comfort.”
Mrs Braid said her son had organised new accommodation and was set to start working with his dad before his “shiny essence” was cruelly snatched from them.
His father Anthony spoke of the frantic journey to Gold Coast hospital after being told to get there quickly in April 2020.
After later leaving the hospital with his “destroyed, sobbing wife”, he steeled himself before telling Mr Braid’s two siblings of their brother’s death.
However, he realised he didn’t have to when he arrived home and heard their cries of grief.
The siblings had rung the hospital and received the devastating news after their parents did not answer their calls.
“Our life now is a life lived in sadness,” the father said, reading his victim impact statement.
However, his family still feels Mr Braid’s presence.
“We will never move from where we live because we always want to have that feeling of connection with him, to think that he is still with us every day,” his father said.
CCTV footage captured the moment Anderson stabbed Mr Braid “with some force” after she and an acquaintance met him outside the apartment building.
He stumbled and lowered himself to the pavement as she fled.
Mr Braid suffered a 13cm deep wound, puncturing his main artery, and died soon after.
Anderson pleaded guilty to manslaughter but it was rejected by the prosecution.
After a jury deliberated for about an hour, Anderson was found guilty of murder on Wednesday.
The New Zealand citizen was sentenced to life imprisonment and faces deportation.
© AAP 2023
