By Erin Pearson and Melissa Cunningham
Every morning, Czarina Gatbonton Tumaliuan would stand outside her brick house and make sure her young children crossed the road safely to their primary school only a few metres away from their home.
On Thursday morning, the 42-year-old mother of four had just seen her children off to school for the day when her next-door neighbours heard three piercing screams ring out in the street.
Victim Czarina Gatbonton Tumaliuan, ran a popular online store called Bellizzima.
A neighbour, who had just dropped her children off at Bethany Catholic Primary School in Werribee, in Melbourne’s west, saw a man standing out the front of the house looking dazed and wearing blood-stained clothing.
Moments later, police cars with sirens blaring, and an ambulance roared down the quiet street.
Czarina was found in the backyard of her Retford Close home with stab wounds just after 9am.
On Friday, her former partner and the father of her children, Jessie James Tumaliuan, 41, faced Melbourne Magistrates’ Court accused of her murder.
Police outside the Werribee crime scene.Credit: Justin McManus
Their children – a young teenage boy and three primary school-aged children, including five-year-old twins – were at school when police told them the devastating news on Thursday.
Tumaliuan, 41, was arrested outside the house and charged a few hours later by police.
The court heard it would take three months to obtain a pathologist report that would help determine the cause of Czarina’s death.
On Friday morning, neighbours in Retford Close were still shaken and distressed by the news of the alleged murder, describing Czarina as a quiet and loving mother.
Accused killer Jessie James Tumaliuan, 41, and Czarina Gatbonton Tumaliuan, 42.
Neighbours said Tumaliuan often came and went from the home in the lead-up to Czarina’s alleged killing.
His silver Nissan Elgrand minivan remains parked out the front of the house.
One neighbour said he had struggled to break the news to his children, one of whom went to high school with and knew Czarina’s teenage son.
“It is devastating. It has completely shaken us,” the father–of-two, who lives a few doors down and spoke to The Age on condition of anonymity, said.
“It is these young kids who will suffer now. I just can’t stop thinking about the mental health impacts it will have on them for the rest of their lives.
“Everyone has a life to live, and it should never be taken away. I think what will come out in the future is that this is just another failure of the system that has left these kids without a mum.”
Other neighbours said Czarina, who was originally from the Philippines, rarely left her home except to see her children off to school each day.
In the past few months, they said, she had opened up the roller door of her garage and sold clothes and accessories from her business, the Bellizzima Online Shop.
Photos of her children dominate her social media accounts, where she describes herself as a working mum of four, a businesswoman, a foodie and an adventurer.
Other images show tubs of fresh homemade cheese she had made and a video of her singing along at a Coldplay concert at Marvel Stadium late last year.
She described her children as her “treasure, pride, joy and inspiration”.
“Successful mothers and women are not the ones that never struggled. They are the ones that never give up, despite the struggles,” she wrote under a photo of herself smiling against a backdrop of a brightly lit city at night.
Police outside the Werribee crime scene.Credit: Justin McManus
Her small business was featured in The Philippine Times, Australia’s longest-serving Filipino newspaper, in 2023.
Magistrate Andrew Halse remanded Tumaliuan in custody to reappear in court on July 31.
National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
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