‘I can’t believe he’s done this’: Witnesses reveal Hannah’s brave final moments

Witnesses have revealed Hannah Clarke was screaming ‘I can’t believe he’s done this, I’ve got a DVO’ in the moments after her estranged ex set her and their three children alight in a Brisbane street. It comes as they describe Baxter’s chilling look during the attack.

Witnesses have revealed Hannah Clarke was screaming ‘I can’t believe he’s done this, I’ve got a DVO’ as she stood near her fully engulfed car in the moment after her estranged ex Rowan Baxter doused her in fuel and set her and their three children on fire in a Brisbane street.

On day one of the inquest into the February 2020 atrocity, residents of the Camp Hill street have given evidence describing how Baxter had a ‘controlled’ and ‘resigned’ look on his face as he held Hannah in a ‘bear hug’ in the front seat of her car while she screamed moments after he ambushed her.

The inquest in a Brisbane court into the deaths of Hannah Clarke and her three children Aaliyah, 6, Laianah, 4 and Trey, 3, will hear from bystanders who witnessed the murders unfold, emergency services who attended and from those who had heard from Rowan Baxter in the days prior to his attack.

“Some of this evidence will be hard to hear,” Counsel assisting Dr Jacoba Brasch said.

SCROLL DOWN TO HEAR THE HORRIFIC WITNESS ACCOUNTS

Hannah Clarke and her son Trey.

“CONTROLLED’: WITNESSES DESCRIBE HORRIFIC SCENE

Durumbil St resident Michael Zemek was washing his car on the morning of the attack when he heard a car approaching his front yard “fairly quickly”.

“Then I heard screaming,” Mr Zemek told the court. “I heard this quite a hysterical scream.”

Mr Zemek said the car pulled up in the gutter of his driveway.

“And Hannah was essentially sort of screaming out ‘call the police, call the police, he’s trying to kill me, he’s poured petrol on me’,” he said.

“And of course that was quite confronting. My reaction was trying to assess the situation, is that possible, is this happening and my sort of immediate reaction was to try to be sort of negotiable, trying to say what’s wrong. Although I didn’t feel like I had like I was going to have much success in being able to negotiate.”

Mr Zemek said Baxter was in the front seat with Hannah.

“What I saw at this time was Baxter was essentially had Hannah in quite a bear hug, both arms around her, he was sitting, they were both in the front seat,” he said.

“He was sitting on his side and she was screaming.”

Mr Zemek said Baxter’s demeanour was “controlled”.

The scene at Camp Hill on the morning Hannah Clarke and her children died. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian

“It was just a constraining hold and I guess sort of my impression was he had more of a resigned look on his face,” he said.

“He didn’t engage me. He sort of just had this sort of resigned look. It was hard to say, sort of, something like that was going to happen.”

Mr Zemek said he asked Baxter what was wrong.

“As I approached the car, as I approached the window, it just went, it just went bang.

“It was just a bang and a blackness sort of hit my face. I sort of turned my head around briefly … when I came to look up, the whole of the inside front was ablaze.”

Mr Zemek said when he looked inside the car, he realised he had to get Ms Clarke out.

He said whether he helped or whether she got out on her own was “a blank”.

He said he had the hose from washing his car. He picked it up off the ground to find Ms Clarke was “head to toe in flames”.

“I just grabbed the hose and tried to get her to roll on the ground so I could try and extinguish the flames,” he said.

After helping Hannah, he said he raced to the other side of the car to find Baxter lying on his side.

“He just seemed like he was out of it. He didn’t seem to be any threat at all at that stage. He was ablaze but not to the same extent as Hannah,” he said.

Mr Zemek said after spraying down Baxter, he returned to help Ms Clarke.

Mr Zemek said Hannah told him: “I didn’t save my kids, I couldn’t save my kids”.

“And I was thinking, because I hadn’t seen the kids or heard the kids I didn’t appreciate that they were there,” he said.

“I thought maybe they’d been killed somewhere else.”

Hannah Clarke’s children Aaliyah, 6, and Laianah, 4, and her son Trey, 3.

Mr Zemek said it wasn’t until later that he realised the three children had been in the car.

“When I think back, I think I was very lucky that I didn’t know they were there because if I had of thought they were there I may have done something silly, but I had no reason to think there were kids there,” he said.

“When I went into the ambulance and into the emergency the doctor said there were three kids in the back and they’d perished. That really hit me.”

Mr Zemek said another neighbour arrived on scene and he passed her the hose.

He went into his property to switch the hose from a tank to the mains and to get his phone.

He said soon after an off-duty paramedic arrived on scene.

“Hannah was very active … and amazingly strong for what she went through,” he said.

“With my medical knowledge … I was worried she was going to be in strife.”

He said he eventually started to notice his face was getting hot and his vision blurred.

He said with Hannah being helped by the off-duty paramedic, he began dousing his face with buckets of water.

Mr Zemek said paramedics who arrived on scene told him he needed to go to hospital.

“Hannah was essentially being attended to … and she was … on a stretcher at that point,” he said.

“That was my last sight of Hannah. I think she was sort of perhaps more subdued at that point. Resigned to what had happened. It must have been a terrible thing. I think she probably had some sense that she wasn’t in good shape.”

‘I COULDN’T STOP HIM’: HANNAH’S CONCERN FOR KIDS

Samantha Covey was driving her children to swimming lessons when she saw smoke coming from the burning car.

When she pulled up, she saw Hannah lying on the grass and the car was fully ablaze.

“The car was fully engulfed, I took a few steps to approach once I knew that there were kids in the car but it was too engulfed,” Ms Covey said.

She said she then turned her attention to Hannah who was seriously injured.

“I’ve approached her and as she stood up I could see that her burns were very significant,” Ms Covey said.

“Her whole body was severely burnt.

“There were patches on her where her clothes were fully burnt away.”

Mourners pay their respects to Hannah Clarek and her children the day after their deaths. Picture: Liam Kidston

Ms Covey said Hannah’s only concern was for her children, telling her: “I can’t believe he’s done this. I’ve got a DVO I can’t believe he’s done this. Where are my babies, where are my kids. How could he do this. That’s my babies in there.”

“She asked if they had got out,” Ms Covey said.

“After seeing the car I just tried to get her to focus on herself, I need you to breathe, I need you to look at me, stay focused.

“I saw a hose on the ground and I started hosing Hannah down. I tried to talk with her and tried to get her to be calm.

“I tried to keep her talking and conscious.”

Ms Covey said at that point, an off-duty paramedic arrived.

“I’m not on duty, you’re doing the only thing you can do until someone else gets here,” she said the paramedic told her.

She said police and the firefighters arrived and Hannah told them Baxter had got in the car with a jerry can and had told her “just drive”.

Ms Covey said Hannah told them she’d been driving the children to school when she was ambushed.

“She saw someone washing their car, she tried to get them to call police. She wanted someone to help.

“(Hannah said) he dropped the lighter. I tried to fight him. I even ripped his shirt, I couldn’t get to him, I couldn’t stop him.”

‘I KNEW I WAS LOOKING AT A DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SITUATION’

Witness Kerry Fernandez said she was walking down the stairs of her home near the corner of Durrimbil St when she heard someone shouting for help.

“I thought it was maybe just a bunch of kids mucking around,” she said.

She said she noticed a car stopped at the intersection but didn’t initially think the shouting was coming from the car.

Ms Fernandez said she saw the car speed from the intersection and come to a sudden stop after mounting the gutter.

She said she then heard a woman screaming.

“Not words, just panicked mother screams. Chilling screams,” she said.

“When you feel like you’ve lost a child for 30 minutes and you can’t find them … (like) nothing I’ve ever heard before.

“I can’t explain it. But I knew i was looking at a domestic violence situation.”

Ms Fernandez called Triple 0 as she ran towards the car when there was a “massive explosion”.

“It was something that the whole suburb would have heard,” she said. “I said you’re going to need the fire brigade, ambulance, everyone.”

She said there was another explosion from the car, causing it to jolt back and begin rolling back down the street.

Two construction workers who had been building a carport further down the street were trying to stop the car from rolling by putting their feet on the back of the vehicle.

Ms Fernandez then ran back to her home where she retrieved a fire extinguisher which she used to try and extinguish the car fire.

“I didn’t know who was alive, who wasn’t alive at this point,” she said.

Ms Fernandez said the heat from the burning car was so intense, it felt as though it was burning her face.

She said Baxter was standing near the vehicle when she approached.

“(I saw) a really burnt person,” she said.

“It did occur to me this is the guy. I looked him up and down first … is he any danger to me? I thought he’s so badly burnt, he’s no threat to me, I’m going to be fine.”

Hannah Clarke and Rowan Baxter.

But she said when she tried to put the fire out, Baxter suddenly “dived” into the car before getting out again when she turned the extinguisher on him.

“His demeanour had changed,” she said.

“He was not wanting me to put the fire out.

“If I went to the right side he followed me there, if I went to the left side, he followed me there.

“(I thought) he’s just proven he’s got brute strength.

“He was growling or something. There was not words coming out … I felt like he was almost guarding the car.”

Asked what look Baxter had in his eye, Ms Fernandez said: “Deadpan, nothing.”

Ms Fernandez said another person tapped her on the shoulder and warned “he’s armed”, referring to Baxter.

She said she had already thought about her “exit strategy”, and she ran to a nearby house where she splashed her face with water.

Ms Fernandez said before she left, she heard a woman say “dude, don’t do it” to Baxter who stabbed himself.

“When I looked over at him he was still in that hunched over position and the girl who told him ‘dude don’t do it’, told me he had stabbed himself,” she said.

“I don’t think anyone could have assumed he wasn’t alive at that point. I think he was alive still.”

MOMENT ROWAN BAXTER PULLED KNIFE FROM BURNING CAR

Reece Gourlay, then a student, was living on Durimbil St at the time of the attack and said he was alerted to the incident when he heard a bang.

“So I left the house to see what was the cause of it and that’s when I noticed smoke coming from the corner of the street,” he said.

“There was some yelling and screaming. It was hard to make out what it was, whether there were any words or just screaming.”

Mr Gourlay said the screams sounded “distressed” and he saw another neighbour, Mrs Fernandez, running toward the smoke with a fire extinguisher.

“I ran towards that direction following her,” he said.

“It wasn’t until I approached the corner the car came into view.

“It was engulfed in flames.”

Rowan Baxter and Hannah Clarke

Mr Gourlay said he saw a man he now knows to be Rowan Baxter who was a “tall guy” with a “big build”.

“And my initial impression was that he was quite agitated and angry is the vibe I got,” he said.

“It was more the way he was pacing around the car and looking desperate…”.

Mr Gourlay said he called out to Baxter.

“The way he was pacing around the car was making it difficult for my neighbour who was trying to put the fire out,” he said.

“He looked like he was trying to get in the way of that.

“I yelled out to him to get away from the car.”

Mr Gourlay said Baxter ignored everything. He said Baxter looked at him “blankly and walked back to the car, jumping into the front passenger seat.

“It appeared to me … that that then prompted my neighbour, she aimed the fire extinguisher into the front of the car,” he said.

He said he thought Baxter might be trying to get something or someone from the car.

Baxter then emerged with a knife, he said.

Mr Gourlay said Baxter took a few steps, crouched down and held the knife to his abdomen.

“I immediately then realised that this isn’t somewhere I want to be,” he said.

He said he ran around the other side of the car to tell his neighbour about the knife. He said they ran across the street away from Baxter.

CAR EXPLOSION ‘SHOOK MY HOUSE’

Sarah Tranberg was getting ready for work at her Raven St home on the morning of February 19 when she heard a loud noise.

“I heard a bit of a pop or an explosion,” she said.

“It kind of shook my house so I thought the tree had fallen in front of my house. That’s how loud and big it was.

“My dogs were at the front barking like crazy.”

Ms Tranberg said when she went outside, she saw the car engulfed in “high” and “intense” flames.

“There was a lady, Hannah, on the ground next to the car,” she said.

“She was badly burnt and she was making a lot of noise but it was quite far away.”

Ms Tranberg said the car began rolling back down the street “popping and exploding in the process”.

She said Hannah was screaming like “someone that’s fully burnt and screaming because they’re hurt”.

Ms Tranberg said she could not see if there was anybody in the burning car.

She agreed that nobody would have been able to get the children out.

“I would say no, because the explosions were so big,” she said.

“There was a radius around the car that was so insanely hot that it was even hard to approach the car.”

Hannah Clarke and Rowan Baxter with kids Laianah, Aaliyah and Trey.

She said she could see a severely burnt Baxter standing very close to the car.

“I kind of said to him, get away from the car … but he couldn’t hear what I was saying,” Ms Tranberg said.

She said the burning car started rolling and she ran back to her house to get her dogs inside.

She returned to move her car, which was in the path of Hannah’s car.

Ms Tranberg said after running back to her driveway, she spotted Baxter holding a knife.

She said he was kneeling on the ground holding a knife which appeared to be about 25cm long.

“I told him to drop the knife, (I said) it’s not worth anything, drop the knife,” she said.

“He didn’t respond.”

Ms Tranberg said Baxter did not look at her.

“He didn’t really have a look on his face,” she said.

“It was kind of like he couldn’t hear me.”

When firefighters arrived, Ms Tranberg told them: “He stabbed himself and he’s badly burnt.”

‘SOME OF THIS EVIDENCE WILL BE HARD TO HEAR’

Counsel assisting Dr Jacoba Brasch told the court several witnesses had been excused from attending court because of the trauma they’d experienced after witnessing the deaths of Hannah and her children.

She said the inquest would hear from bystanders who witnessed the murders unfold, from emergency services who attended and from those who had heard from Rowan Baxter in the days prior to his attack.

“Some of this evidence will be hard to hear,” she said.

She said the inquest would be played footage from Bunnings showing Baxter buying a jerry can, zip ties and surface cleaner.

Dr Brasch said friends of Ms Clarke and Baxter would give evidence about his “appearance, his demeanour, his preoccupations” and “Hannah’s worries that he might kill her”.

The court will also hear evidence from a witness who called police after seeing a man matching Baxter’s description “snatch a child” on Boxing Day.

Court

Dr Brasch said the inquest would hear “chilling audio” of Baxter calling a behaviour change program the day before he killed Hannah and her children.

In the audio, Baxter is heard telling the operator “I’m not the one who has the problem”.

“Sixteen hours later, he did the unimaginable,” Dr Brasch said.

CCTV footage will also be played for the court showing Baxter walking through Bunnings, looking at mower fuel before selecting a jerry can which he ultimately went on to use to murder his family.

PARENTS HOPE INQUEST WILL GIVE HANNAH A VOICE

Sue and Lloyd Clarke this morning said they hoped the inquest would help give their daughter a voice and help them move on from the tragedy.

“We’re feeling a little bit nervous, it’s something new to go through,” Mr Clarke said.

“We’re just hoping we can work out where the system let Hannah and her children down and they can put new procedures in place and move on so people won’t have to go through this terrible thing.”

Mrs Clarke said she expected the process would be difficult but they had a good support network to help them through.

She will be one of the witnesses called to give evidence in the inquest which is expected to run for eight days.

“I’m nervous about it but also I want to give Hannah a voice,” she said

Mrs Clarke said she wanted people to know Hannah loved her children and they were “young and vibrant”.

A pre-inquest hearing last year revealed Ms Clarke’s estranged husband, Rowan Baxter, had displayed escalating behaviour in the lead-up to the murders.

It was February, 2020, when the 31-year-old mother, her daughters, Aaliyah, 6, and Laianah, 4, and her son Trey, 3, were killed in a brutal arson attack metres from her parents’ home in Camp Hill.

Hannah Clarke's parents Sue and Lloyd. File picture: NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

That morning Baxter stalked Ms Clarke’s car before forcing his way into the passenger side.

He then ordered Ms Clarke to drive, before pouring petrol over her, and on to the back seats where his children were strapped in, and lighting the car on fire.

The 42-year-old later killed himself.

Ms Clarke had confided in some loved ones that Baxter had been controlling but always stressed he had never been violent toward her.

The pair met in 2009, married in 2012 and separated in early December 2019.

Ms Clarke moved into her parents’ home with her children, but things quickly deteriorated.

By Boxing Day, Ms Clarke had to involve police and lawyers when Baxter forcibly took one of their daughters interstate and refused to bring her home.

Ms Clarke’s parents have become advocates against domestic violence, creating the Small Steps 4 Hannah Foundation.