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A Sydney mother is expected to be charged with the murder of one of her children and the attempted murder of two others as police issue an urgent plea for the NSW government to throw every available resource at domestic violence following a spate of killings at the weekend.
The stabbing of the five-year-old boy and his two siblings inside a car in the Blue Mountains on Sunday afternoon was the fourth domestic violence-related death across the state in just over 24 hours and sparked calls from advocates for large-scale federal investment in the sector.
On Saturday, three women were allegedly killed by men known to them in a spate of attacks over less than 12 hours.
Just before midday, a 31-year-old man allegedly stabbed his female partner, 23, inside a Wagga Wagga home. He was charged with domestic violence murder and refused police bail to face court on Sunday.
At 5.15pm, police were called to a Bondi Beach unit where a 47-year-old man, Sergei Mitnik, allegedly fatally stabbed his 90-year-old grandmother. Mitnik’s lawyer, Javid Faiz, told a court on Sunday that his client’s mental state had been affected by the weight-loss drug Ozempic and asked that he undergo an urgent psychiatric assessment.
About four hours later, police were called to an incident at Mole Creek in the state’s north where they found the body of a 70-year-old woman, who appeared to have been decapitated, according to police sources familiar with the investigation but not authorised to speak publicly. The woman’s son has been charged with murder.
“I can’t remember a weekend like this in my career,” NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Peter McKenna said on Monday. “It is really overwhelming.”
Cyclists found the children and their mother, aged in her 40s, with stab wounds while riding near Springwood about 12.45pm on Sunday before performing first aid. The five-year-old boy died at the scene, while his siblings were taken to The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, where they remain in a critical condition.
Their mother, who McKenna said was not known to police, remains in a critical condition suffering from what police believe are self-inflicted stab wounds. She remains under police guard, but is yet to be interviewed.
McKenna said none of the relationships at the centre of the attacks were known to police for domestic violence, and no apprehended domestic violence orders were in place to protect the alleged victims. The 31-year-old Wagga Wagga man was known to police for alleged domestic violence offending in a previous relationship, McKenna said.
Domestic Violence NSW, the state’s peak body for domestic and family violence, said the crisis demanded large-scale investment, from the federal government to local communities.
“No woman should fall through the gaps between systems. No frontline service should be left carrying a national crisis alone,” it said in a statement issued on Monday morning.
“We cannot keep responding to women being killed one tragedy at a time. This is an intergenerational crisis that requires long-term commitment, co-ordination and sustained national investment. We have the evidence. We have the solutions. Now we need to resource them at the scale of the crisis.”
One woman was killed by an intimate partner every 11 days in 2024-25, according to recent data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
McKenna said police were responding to a domestic violence-related incident every three minutes.
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