A mother has stared down her daughter’s killer as she described the night she found out about her murder in Sydney’s CBD.
‘I know our house was quiet, very very quiet, no tears, no shouting just numbness,’ Joanne Dunn told the NSW Supreme Court sentence hearing for Mert Ney.
‘No parent should ever have to hear those words … your daughter has been murdered,’ she said, looking directly at Ney who was sitting in the dock.
Michaela Dunn was 24 years old when she opened the Clarence Street apartment door to Ney holding a butcher’s knife in his bag in August 2019.
Moments later he stabbed her to death.
Michaela Dunn (pictured), 24, was killed by Mert Ney with a butchers knife in 2019
Ney bragged about the stabbing in a video
Ney, 22, earlier pleaded guilty to her murder as well as to other violent offences including wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm for stabbing Lin Bo on the street during his CBD rampage.
Justice Peter Johnson warned the friends and family of Ms Dunn before graphic footage was shown of Ney taking a Snapchat video of himself and his bloodied victim.
‘I’m f***ing psycho,’ he wrote after sending an acquaintance the short clip.
‘I was laughing bro. The fear.’
Ms Dunn’s mother Joanne (pictured left) told her pain at realising her daughter was killed
Michaela Dunn (centre) was stabbed to death in Sydney’s CBD
He took another video of him standing in the fire-exit stairwell pointing to the blood all over his hands and his shoes before leaving a trail in his wake.
As he brandished the bloodied kitchen knife he was chased by a growing number of bystanders before he was eventually restrained with a milk crate and a chair.
‘You just stabbed a chick,’ one person yelled while another cautioned them to wait for police.
Ms Dunn described how the evening of ‘Mikki’s death’ began like any other Tuesday, with her daughter due to arrive home for dinner at 7pm.
But 8pm, and then 9pm arrived. Her absence ‘extremely out-of-character,’ she drove to her daughter’s unit hoping to catch a housemate, hoping she was just at the movies.
Police said Ms Dunn had arranged to see Ney, and body was found an hour after Ney allegedly stabbed a second woman in the back
Ney (pictured being arrested) showed no remorse for murdering the young woman
Killer Ney (pictured) is being sentenced at the NSW Supreme Court
The ‘welcome call’ from her husband to come home was not what she was expecting, as two detectives delivered the tragic news.
‘We have not just lost our daughter but we have lost our future as it should have been.’
The unimaginable pain her family now suffers, a heart that physically hurts and struggling to take the next breath, is only known by those who have ‘travelled this road’, she said.
She asked that people remember her daughter as the kind and amazing person she was, not stripped of her identity as the media originally did.
Ms Dunn also thanked the ‘sidewalk heroes’ who prevented Ney from breaking apart any more families.
After Ms Bo was stabbed from behind in the shoulder, she said it was difficult to describe the feelings of terror while Ney fled wearing a balaclava.
‘I dropped like a hunted animal,’ she said in her victim impact statement that was read out by a support person.
Blood poured out of her as she screamed for help before colleagues pulled her inside, but the pain was unbearable, she said.
Despite Ney’s history of mental illness, his sister told the court he pleaded guilty so the victims’ families did not have to suffer through any more court appearances, nor did he want to waste any more taxpayers’ money.
His sentence hearing will resume on Tuesday.
Ms Dunn (pictured) has been described as ‘kind and amazing’ by her mother