The 18-unit complex in Wyong attracted national headlines on Saturday, when a man’s body was found after he had allegedly been held captive for three days, beaten and tortured with a jet lighter over what police say was over a drug debt.

Residents of the complex have told The Daily Telegraph they live in fear, sleeping with makeshift weapons for protection while others say the vulnerable were “preyed on” by dealers.

Chris Coulter’s unit is next to the one in which 52-year-old Sean “Frog” Froggatt was found dead.

Hours earlier a 44-year-old woman, named in court documents as Mariana Taitoko, had managed to escape that unit and raise the alarm that she had been held captive since Thursday and allegedly burned with a jet lighter.

Hairdresser, Bonnie Cullen, who lived in the unit where Mr Froggatt’s body was found, was arrested a few hours later at Wattanobbi and charged with concealing a serious indictable offence.

Her lover Daniel Hasapis, 30, was charged with Mr Froggatt’s murder. Both faced Wyong Local Court this week where neither applied for bail.

Mr Coulter said he arrived home drunk after a day at the beach on Saturday when a “chain reaction of poor decisions” led him to argue with police.

He said he “started spinning out really badly” when officers ordered him to stay out of the crime scene but he believed the “blood drops had been there for a week before”.

THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE OF POVERTY

Dried blood is an all-too common sight in the stairwells around the housing commission units on Levitt St, Wyong, colloquially known as the “Ice Palace”.

It stains the carpets and walls near the empty window sills where only fragments of broken glass remain.

That is the nature of the Central Coast’s most notorious public housing flats where residents usually find themselves there through various chain reactions of poor decisions – be it their own or those forced upon them by others.

Either way their lives are inevitably shaped by one or a combination of three overriding factors being trauma, mental health or substance abuse –­ the golden triangle of poverty.

Levitt St is for many the second-last stop before homelessness.

In fact one former resident, Zoe Lee Zombori, 34, told a court she robbed a service station at knifepoint so she could be in prison with her then partner, who had been locked up the day before, rather than face life at Levitt St alone.

Ironically the couple split when Zombori’s partner was released from custody before she was.

‘MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES, DRUG-TAKING’

Single mum “Sam” told The Daily Telegraph she had lived at the units for about 12 years but longed to get away.

“There’s a lot of mental health issues and then there’s the drug taking,” she said.

“If you hear screaming, it happens that often, no one takes any notice. Police are here more often than not.”

Taxi’s don’t like coming down this end of the street. But hang around and it won’t be long before a veritable procession of cars pulls up at the end of the cul-de-sac.

Like unmarked courier vehicles they stop briefly as occupants wearing Nike TNs scamper over balconies and disappear into units or are met by residents carrying out items wrapped in towels or blankets — a power cord hanging out from underneath the only indication of what’s concealed within.

Another long-time resident Kylie Kerry, 54, was running a successful business making detergents and industrial lubricants at Baulkham Hills as a 19-year-old before a chain reaction of poor decisions changed the trajectory of her life.

She fell in love with a “bi-polar thief” and drug user before she found herself homeless and addicted to heroin.

Ms Kerry said living at Levitt St “brings you down” but it wasn’t the tenants who dealt drugs.

She said it was freeloaders and itinerants who would latch onto someone who lived there and try to take over “until they get arrested and it quietens back down again”.

“The flats themselves are beautiful inside,” she said.

“They’re open plan with big bathrooms and laundries.”

Ms Kerry said “vulnerable people are preyed upon”. Her car has been vandalised four times and number plate stolen five times.

“It’s a nuisance. The police get very jaded coming here,” she said.

‘THE HOOD BRAH, THAT’S THE WAY IT IS’

The public housing block was first approved in 1978 for 12 units over three levels with undercroft parking.

The consent lapsed but underwent various revisions before it was finally approved for 18, two-bedroom units by then Wyong Shire Council with construction commencing in 1992.

From the outside the “Ice Palace” looks like one of the newer unit blocks located at the end of Levitt St next to Wyong Tennis Club, the public pool and across the road from an SES depot, Girl Guides and Scouts halls.

But as one resident, who declined to give his name, said the area was very much “the hood brah, that’s the way it is”.

Just 150m up the road is Carmichael’s Corner Shop where owner Steven Van Meeteren was stabbed seven times during a botched robbery in April 2019.

It was the second time the shopkeeper almost died after an earlier stabbing in November 2010.

He can no longer face working there but his wife said she used to see Mr Froggatt so often she didn’t believe reports he had allegedly been held captive for up to 72 hours.

“I thought I saw him on Saturday,” she told The Daily Telegraph.

Her husband’s stabber, aged 19, meanwhile remains in custody after being sentenced to three years and five months jail.

Mr Froggatt’s murder is the second in a housing commission property on the Central Coast within 12 months after the stabbing of Shahn Baker, 42, at Erina on February 3 last year.

His alleged killer remains before the courts.

Rodney Bourke, 50, reckons two years ago “a bloke was taken away in the boot of a car”.

Tuggerah Lakes Police issued a missing person appeal for the whereabouts of Shaun Rippendale, 34, who was last seen about 2pm on July 5, 2010.

“He owed that much money, to that many people, for drugs,” Mr Bourke said.

Police later pulled Mr Rippendale’s body from Wyong River. Despite the rumours his death recorded as a suicide and there was no evidence to suggest otherwise.

“The police might as well move in, there’s always something happening here,” Mr Bourke added.

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