Almost a month after three children were killed in a western Sydney house fire allegedly lit by their father, their grieving mother carried her youngest daughter’s tiny pink coffin from a heartbreaking funeral service.
“To my beautiful angels, no words can describe how much I miss you. How unfair it is that you had to go so soon,” their mother Stacey Gammage said in a tribute read at the service.
Stacey Gammage carries her baby daughter Willow’s casket from her children’s funeral service.Credit: Nine News
Mourners gathered at Minchinbury’s Pinegrove Memorial Park on Friday to remember Dean, 6, Jaxson, 3, and Willow, five months, who all died in the blaze at Lalor Park last month.
Rose flower petals were handed out and pastel balloons were released into the air as mourners farewelled the children, who were in tiny caskets.
The children could have been anything they wanted, Chaplain Gary Raymond, the chaplain who farewelled them said.
Raymond said he would not forget watching Gammage carry her baby girl’s casket at the service attended by Premier Chris Minns, Deputy Premier Prue Car and homicide squad Commander Danny Doherty.
Dean, 6, Jaxson, 3, and Willow Heasman, five months, were farewelled at their funeral after being killed in a house fire allegedly lit by their father.Credit: Nine News
“I spoke about the way they played, their personalities and what they might have been … doctors, nurses, jet fighter pilots,” Raymond, the former chief inspector of NSW Police, told the Herald.
“It was to celebrate the children’s lives. Stacey carried little Willow’s coffin in her arms.”
Police will allege the blaze was deliberately lit by the children’s father, Dean Heasman, who allegedly attacked his partner, the children’s mother, before allegedly setting fire to the home, blocking the exit and preventing emergency services from accessing the property.
Heasman spent several days in an induced coma suffering from burns and smoke inhalation. When he woke, he was charged with three counts of murder, five counts of attempted murder and one charge of destroying property with the intent to endanger life.
The children were killed in a western Sydney house fire allegedly lit by their father last month.Credit: Kate Geraghty
It is the second case of alleged filicide – where a parent kills their own child – in the state in recent months, after James Harrison killed himself and his two-year-old son Rowan in Lismore in May.
In the immediate aftermath of the Lalor Park tragedy, Minns branded the children’s deaths a “horrifying and senseless act … that’s quite rightly outraged the entire state”.
There was no mention of the fire at the service. Instead, mourners tried to celebrate the young lives lost.
Raymond said the boys had themed coffins with different cartoon characters, carried by the family to the grave site.
“It will stay with you because, normally when a chaplain does a funeral, there’s a coffin and the person is normally elderly, or tragically out of a road crash or something, but to have three little kids, it was really confronting,” Raymond said.
“But we didn’t mention the fire at all. We didn’t mention the alleged offender at all. We were able to just focus on the kids.”
The children’s distraught mother wrote a message that her sister read out.
A speaker from Dean’s school shared what a wonderful student he was.
“She said he was a bit of a leader,” Raymond said.
“So later, I said, ‘Who knows, he could have been a teacher.’ ”
In a horrific tragedy like this, there is no such thing as closure, Raymond said.
“There’ll be bad days and good days and more sad days ahead. But we will never ever forget these three children.”
While Friday was about the children’s lives and not the way they died, Raymond said he could not ignore the plague of men’s violence against women and children.
“It is a worldwide issue at the moment,” he said.
“No matter what culture or country, there is an issue with the abuse and killing of women and children, so we have to do something to stop this.”
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service (1800RESPECT) on 1800 737 732.
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