Heartbroken father visits place where daughter was last seen alive
The father of an international student who was found dead in Melbourne’s north has expressed his unimaginable pain.
Aiia Maasarwe, 21, was a Palestinian Arab of Israeli citizenship whose body was found by passers-by in Bundoora, about 16 kilometres northeast of Melbourne’s CBD, about 7am on Wednesday.
Her father Saeed Maasarwe had planned a trip to Australia to see his daughter. Instead he’s here to retrieve her body, and visit the place where she died.
“I wait for her, I still wait,” Mr Maasarwe said.
“I don’t know how long time I need to wait.”
From the depths of his sorrow, he offered a brave message of thanks.
“I feel very, very sad from one side, but from another side, when I get this support and this help from the people, from the community, from the police, this is make the suffering at least to feel more, a little more better,” Mr Maasarwe said.
The place where Ms Maasarwe’s body was found early Wednesday morning is now a growing memorial.
“This is giving me good feeling, but also in another way I am sad because this is the last place where my daughter was here,” Mr Maasarwe said.
The father read messages left by locals as well as his daughter’s friends and teachers.
He was comforted by people he had never met, who have also been touched by this senseless crime.
“I wish, I hope, I pray she is now in the more nice place than this place and in the paradise,” Mr Maasarwe said.
Now the heartbroken father has to take his daughter home.
“I have many dreams to be with her but I cannot now,” Mr Maasarwe said.
“I want to be with her more time but someone decide I cannot be.”
