Boolaroo murder case: Inside the home where a teenage girl allegedly stabbed her little sister, 10, to death in an ‘unthinkable’ tragedy
EXCLUSIVE
The house where a 17-year-old girl allegedly stabbed her 10-year-old sister to death is located in a brand new residential area on the edge of a city that is still developing.
The sisters, their mother and another adult woman were the first residents of the new rental home in Boolaroo, 12 miles west of Newcastle, where the “unthinkable tragedy” unfolded on Monday.
They had lived there for almost three years in the building with four large bedrooms, two bathrooms, a stone kitchen, a tiled outdoor terrace, two parking spaces and a grassy backyard.
Police said they had never been called to the home before the alleged murder and had had no previous “interactions” with either girl.
The sisters and their family are said to have moved into the ‘Weemala At The Lake Estate’ in mid-2021, around the same time Bunnings and Costco opened their nearby store in a $90 million shopping complex in Lake Macquarie.
The sisters, aged 17 and 10, are said to have moved into the four-bedroom, two-bathroom house (upstairs) with their mother and an older woman in mid-2021.
The house where the alleged murder took place is in a new housing development in Boolaroo, a suburb of the city of Lake Macquarie, about 20km west of Newcastle.
The $650-a-week rental house has a large tiled open-plan living room with air conditioning and carpeted bedrooms with ceiling fans.
The neighborhood, with 150 homes and another 150 under construction, is normally filled with scenes of people walking their dogs and children playing.
But the peace was shattered at 3.45pm on Monday by the death of the young girl which was described as ‘very difficult to imagine’ by Detective Chief Inspector Danny Doherty. It’s unthinkable’.
The fatal stabbing is said to have occurred while at least one of the adult women had left to run errands.
When emergency services arrived at the scene, paramedics frantically tried to save the young girl’s life.
But she died on the spot from multiple stab wounds from ‘a sharp object’ in her upper body.
Police arrested her older sister at the scene and took her to Belmont Police Station, where she was charged with murder and remanded in custody at the Broadmeadow Children’s Court on Tuesday.
Shocked neighbors in the largely family-occupied houses on the estate were shocked as they watched forensic officers swarm the house.
A neighbor told Daily Mail Australia none of the residents knew the family well.
The two sisters and their relatives would have been the first residents of the new-build house with tiled floors, a stone kitchen and a large open-plan living room with air conditioning.
A forensics officer photographs the house where the sisters lived with two adult women, one of whom was believed to be their mother, in the four-bedroom rental property.
“My daughter is the same age and she is afraid that someone will stab her too, so she is very shocked,” the neighbor said.
“The woman has lost everything,” she added, referring to the mother of the two sisters, “she has lost her family. It’s a tragedy.’
Listings for the residential area, where most homes are owner-occupied, promote its proximity to lakefront parks, a swimming pool complex and waterfront walking trails in nearby Speers Point.
It’s ‘an easy journey into Newcastle’s CBD’ and ‘within minutes of the spectacular Lake Macquarie waterfront’.
Boolaroo last made headlines in 1989 when it was the epicenter of the Newcastle earthquake that destroyed buildings, but has since been the site of property developments such as the Weemala estate.
The real estate agency, which rented the property to the family, declined to comment ‘on grounds of the privacy law’.
The 17-year-old girl was not required to be released from jail when her case was heard in court on Tuesday and no family members attended the brief hearing.
The teenager has not applied for bail and will next appear in court via video link on June 24.