The family of a man stabbed to death on the Perth Esplanade during Australia Day celebrations two years ago have said they are ‘destroyed beyond repair’.
On the anniversary of Patrick Slater’s murder, his mother Cindy Brockman, 52, and older sister Chantelle, 34, exclusively told Daily Mail Australia how their family has been ‘broken’.
Chantelle said: ‘Our family is broken, our mum tries to keep the family going but she can’t. The little ones keep asking when ‘boy’ is going to come home and we try to explain that he’s gone. Our family is just ruined, they’ve just ruined our family.
‘He was the main member of our family’: Patrick, pictured with four of his six sisters at their father’s grave in 2009
‘He didn’t die of a sickness, he was murdered and that is what hurts so much.’
This weekend marks two years since Patrick, 26, was beaten and stabbed to death by a gang of eight – including an 11-year-old boy – in central Perth in 2016.
Those responsible, including one the youngest convicted killers in Australia’s history, were called ‘the Patrick Slater slayers’ by prosecutors.
This week Patrick’s family won’t recognise Australia Day, just as they haven’t celebrated Christmas or Easter since their only brother and son was murdered.
The 26-year-old was in Perth with family members the night he was killed. His sister Courtney witnessed the attack take place
‘Australia Day just brings us back to that one night. Now we just cry and have a little prayer for him.
‘We don’t celebrate Australia Day, or Christmas or Easter, we don’t do anything like that anymore since the main member of our family is gone,’ said Chantelle.
On the night he was killed Patrick Slater was in Perth with his two sisters and two cousins.
‘My sisters have nightmares because all they think about him telling them to run. They didn’t want to leave him but he just said ‘run’ so they ran and then when they went back to look for him they had to see this terrible thing, we should never, ever see our brother like that.’
‘We know him as a strong, strong man that nobody can ever put down – that’s what hurt the most, knowing what happened.’
She said Patrick ‘wasn’t a fighter’ but would do anything to protect his family.
‘He always stood by his word. He always said he would never let anyone touch his sisters even if it killed him…but we didn’t think it would actually come to that,’
In the early hours of January 27, 2016, Patrick and two of his six sisters were waiting to be collected from the Esplanade train station by Cindy and Chantelle.
Chantelle Slater says she saw the convicted men on the night of Patrick’s death but ‘didn’t know they were the men who killed my brother’
He didn’t want to go out that night but on the insistence of a cousin, decided at the last minute to join his sisters for a night in the city.
Just as the siblings were due to be collected, violence broke out between the Slaters and another group.
‘I was just waiting at the Esplanade train station and I saw these boys running past me. At the time I didn’t know they were the boys who murdered my brother.
‘He was up laying there losing his life and I was looking for him. That’s the hardest part knowing how close I was to him and I didn’t even know he was there.’
Patrick was alone when he was attacked. After one of his sisters was hit in the leg with a weapon, he insisted, she hide in nearby bushes and not move.
He had been carrying a machete throughout the night but that was no match for the group who were captured on CCTV footage armed with rocks, bottles, a metal bar socket and a timber pole.
Slater, 26, was struck 22 times and bled to death after being stabbed with a screwdriver
The ‘slayers’ attacked Patrick Slater following a night of violence in central Perth. The brawl that killed him happened at the Esplanade train station and lasted less than a minute.
After being struck 22 times, Patrick bled to death after one of the group plunged a weapon, likely to have been a screwdriver, into his chest and through his aorta and lungs on the forecourt of the station.
His sister Courtney Slater, who was injured in the brawl, witnessed everything.
‘She’s not well, she’s on tablets, she just cries every day and get upset all the time,’ said her mother, Cindy.
‘He told her to run and he made her run and now she feels like she blames herself because she left him there on his own, but he made her go. Because if he didn’t make her go there might have been more bodies to bury.’
Chantelle added: ‘My mother, she hurts every day, she cries every day. She takes strong anti-depressants, sleeping pills. We just try and keep her going throughout the day.
The 11-year-old involved was thought to be the youngest person in Australia’s history to be charged with murder. The charge was later downgraded to manslaughter and he was sentenced to 4 years in juvenile detention
‘In the family, we’ve all tried to kill ourselves, but we think, if we did that we would never get to see him again because we believe he is in heaven.
‘The last time his nieces and nephews saw him he walked out the front door and said he’d be back later. They keep asking when he’s coming back and it’s so hard to explain it to them that he’s not coming back.’
Last year, each of Patrick’s eight killers were found guilty.
Christopher Birdsall, Dylan Anthony, Robert Pickett and brothers Clinton and Stefan Mead were all convicted of murder and given minimum terms between 16 and 18 years.
Handing down the sentences, Supreme Court of Western Australia Justice Peter Martino said: ‘None of them made any attempt to assist Mr Slater. His young life had been tragically cut short by the offenders.’
Robert Pickett (third left), Dylan Anthony (second right) and Clinton Mead (far right) were each given minimum terms of between 16 and 18 years
Robert Pickett (left) was one of six men convicted of Patrick Slater’s murder
The remaining two had their initial charges of murder downgraded to manslaughter with the 11-year-old being sentenced to serve a maximum 4 years in juvenile detention.
‘We are disgusted with the sentence…in the last part of the court case I didn’t even go. Because I knew what was going to happen, I knew this boy was going to get released very soon. I just knew,’ said Cindy.
He should have been dealt with like the elder ones, because he was there too.’
The Slater family have lodged an appeal against the leniency of the boy’s sentence, but are yet to hear back from the Western Australian Director of Public Prosecutions.
But for Cindy, she knows no amount of time served will bring Patrick back to his family.
‘My beautiful boy, my only son. He always took care of his family, he was a wonderful man. I had never seen anyone like him and I never will again.’