New footage shows Tara Brown's killer calmly walk away after attack
Chilling video has been released showing some of murdered mother Tara Brown’s final moments alive.
The young mother was bludgeoned by former partner Lionel Patea as she lay trapped in the wreckage of her car – after Patea ran her off the road in September 2015.
Patea, a former Bandido bikie, was jailed for life on Monday after entering guilty pleas on the first day of his trial.
The new vision shows Patea speed past in his black four-wheel-drive after ramming Ms Brown off the road in Molendinar.
The 25-year-old is then seen ditching his car and running along the street, where he then picks up the weapon he used to kill Tara – a fire hydrant cover weighing almost eight kilograms.
“She was upside down and I couldn’t help her, so I thought I would go ring the police and the ambulance,” witness Edward Harding said.
But as residents scrambled to help the mother-of-one, Patea bludgeoned his former partner 16 times in a horrific act of domestic violence.
Witnesses had thought he was trying to rescue Ms Brown, but heard the 24-year-old’s screams for help.
"What I saw you do to Tara horrified me to my core," witness Leesa Kennedy said.
"It was a domestic violence situation that resulted in you beating to death a woman as she lay trapped in her car unable to help herself."
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Patea left the metal slab on his former lover’s face, before video shows him calmly walk away and drive from the scene in a council ute.
“It’s just shocking how it all panned out,” family friend Devon Graham said.
Describing Patea as a “monster”, Ms Brown’s mother said she will never be able to forgive him for leaving the couple’s child without a mother.
"There is not a day go by that (Aria, the couple’s daughter) doesn't ask for Tara. We started with 'I miss Mummy. I want Mummy'. Then we moved to 'I want to see Mummy'. And then just the other week, she asked me if she was going to get a new mummy. Just like her mummy," Ms Brown’s mother Natalie Hinton said.
Before her tragic death, Patea had held scissors to the New Zealand mother’s throat and denied her access to their daughter, Aria, for two days as lawyers finalised a custody agreement.
Ms Brown's attempts to seek refuge and full custody of Aria left Patea enraged moments before the tragic murder.
National domestic violence helpline: 1800 737 732 or 1800RESPECT. In an emergency call triple-zero.
