Family of Pellegrini’s Sisto Malaspina, stabbed in Bourke St attack, tells of love and loss

Pellegrini’s icon Sisto Malaspina always had a wide grin. Now his granddaughter Sophia’s smile is a beacon of hope, slowly mending the hearts of her grieving family and proving love triumphs over terror.

Sofia Malaspina has her grandpa’s smile.

The baby girl — just born when Pellegrini’s icon Sisto Malaspina was killed in Melbourne’s Bourke St terror attack — has also inherited his love of food, company and chat.

Now nearly 10 months old, Sofia has been a beacon of light in a year of fear and grief, say Sisto’s widow Vicky and his son David — who is Sofia’s dad.

Family love has triumphed over terror.

“She has that wide smile, a smile that is just like Sisto’s. She’s just always happy and babbling away,” Vicky says of her granddaughter.

She is speaking at the family’s restaurant The Spaghetti Tree, where, at 75, she still works alongside David, managing the books.

Vicky and David Malaspina with 10-month-old baby Sophia. Picture: Alex Coppel

The traditional Italian restaurant is directly opposite the family’s other business at the top end of Bourke St, Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar, where Sisto spent his working days with partner Nino Pangrazi, and was so well known and loved.

“Sofia comes into the restaurant and I see her little face, and it just gives me so much joy,” Vicky says, wiping tears.

“I sit with her in the front window and we watch the trams go by in Bourke St, and I sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star to her, and I think, ‘If your Nonno was alive and he knew you were here, he’d be over like a flash’. It’s just so sad.”

Sisto was on a mission to buy chocolates for his staff — as part of a planned celebration of the birth of Sofia — when he was murdered.

For David, 38, who today celebrates his first Father’s Day as a dad, but also the first without his own, the occasion is bittersweet.

David and Sophia, 10 months, in their restaurant, Spaghetti Tree, opposite Pellegrini’s. Picture: Alex Coppel

“It’s been a year of amazingness and the opposite end of the scale. I was overjoyed with the birth of my daughter, and then, a week later …” he says, his voice trailing off.

It was just one night after David’s wife, Ruth, left hospital with their newborn that terror struck.

As Hassan Khalif Shire Ali created carnage on Bourke St on November 9 last year — crashing a vehicle loaded with gas bottles and stabbing three people before being shot by police — the happy family was preparing to enjoy a roast and opening a bottle of wine at their Macedon Ranges home.

Then David was called and told Sisto could not be found.

David and Sophia Malaspina, 10 months. Picture: Alex Coppel

“We knew something had happened in town and we thought that maybe the police were holding dad as a witness or something. But after a while I thought, ‘Something’s just not right’ so I went into the city.

“The staff were ringing everywhere and couldn’t get any answers, so I said, ‘Well I’m going to go and get some answers’, and I went down and parked myself in the middle of it all.

“I waited and waited. And they came and told us about midnight.

“I said, ‘Have you told mum?’ and they said, ‘No’. I said, ‘I’ll tell her’.”

Witnesses have said it appeared Sisto, 74, was walking over to the terrorist’s car after it burst into flames to offer assistance when he was stabbed in the chest.

There is no doubt the top end of the CBD is “duller” for his ebullient father’s passing, David says.

Sisto Malaspina loved good food and company and loved to talk. Picture: Kelly Barnes

Melbourne lost some of its heart and sparkle on that dreadful day.

Nearly a year on, Sisto’s colourful, “crazy” shirts still hang in the wardrobe of the family’s Kew home, and his little dog Bobby still looks to the door at 11pm, waiting for his master to walk through.

After 47 years of married life, living alone has taken a lot of getting used to, Vicky says.

While her friends and children, Lisa and David, are great supports and work keeps her busy, it’s hard in the still of night, where fear rules, and in the quiet of the mornings, where the void left by noisy, busy Sisto is keenly felt.

Vicky and Sisto Malaspina with David on his first birthday. Picture: Alex Coppel

For the loss of a man who lived life so loudly and largely, it’s funny that it’s actually the little things she misses the most, like Sunday outings to the country to buy a pie, family dinners, Sisto’s “tinkering” and constant, happy chatter.

She remembers him, clad in colour, standing in the middle of Bourke St, waving madly and blowing kisses to herself and David across the road.

Big things — such as Sisto’s state funeral — Vicky can barely remember, such was the shock of his death. And the words she exchanged with her husband on November 9, as he left for work, are also missing from her memory.

It was such an ordinary day, until it wasn’t. So she paid no mind to their goodbyes that morning.

“Did we actually say goodbye to each other as he was going or not? He used to say ‘Mum, I’ll see you later’, and I’d say, “If you’re lucky, Dad’. I think ‘Oh, I hope I didn’t say that to him on that day’, but it was just a joke we had. It’s one of the things that haunts me. How did we part that day?

“I know we parted in a good mood, because we always did, but on that day, what did I say to him and what did he say to me? It hurts. It really hurts, when you can’t even remember. You don’t expect things like that to happen to your husband.”

Russell Crowe was one of Sisto Malaspina’s favourite customers.

But the nightmares are subsiding.

After Sisto’s death, Vicky would wake nightly in her bed, thrashing and screaming. Mostly, in those “horrendous” nightmares, she was running for her life, desperately trying to escape someone or something. One night the terrors were so bad, she fell from her bed and hit her head, requiring an ambulance and observation in hospital.

“Just very recently the nightmares seem to have stopped, I hope they stay away. I still think horrible thoughts in the night, but I don’t actually wake up screaming anymore,” Vicky says.

Condolences, support, compassion and kindness have come from all quarters, because Sisto treated all-comers to his coffee bar equally, David and Vicky say.

Sisto Malaspina of Pellegrini's espresso bar. Picture: Kelly Barnes

Politicians, police, bureaucrats, movie stars, rock singers, sporting heroes, business elite, chefs and waiters, tradies and guys sleeping rough — “they were all just people to Sisto”, and he was interested in what every one of them had to say.

“It was about the person, not what they did. It could be Rusty (Russell Crowe), could be Jimmy Barnes, could be anybody just pops in and grabs a seat and they all got served just the same,” David says.

Customers drink coffee inside Pellegrini's Espresso Bar as it re-opens to the public in Melbourne, Australia, Tuesday, November 13, 2018. (AAP Image/Daniel Pockett) NO ARCHIVING

“Sisto really just loved people and he loved life.”

And he loved his granddaughter.

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When Ruth and David announced they were having a baby at a family dinner early last year, the man who was never lost for words remarkably fell silent.

“Then he just got up from the table and went away for a bit by himself. I think he was overcome. I think he was weeping, with joy,” Vicki recalls.

When baby Sofia came into the world, Sisto held her with pride, and a smile as wide as Bourke St.

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