Shandee’s Story podcast: witnesses relive nightmare on Boddington St

Ringo Tapim was watching a horror film when he heard choking sounds outside. What unfolded was worse than any film.

Shandee Blackburn, left, and her sister, Shannah, on holiday in Mykonos.

Ringo Tapim will never forget the horror and chaos that unfolded the night he walked on to a first-floor balcony and saw a young woman staggering across the street below.

Tapim was at his father’s apartment in Boddington Street in Mackay, watching gothic horror film Van Helsing, when he heard choking sounds outside just after midnight.

What unfolded in the early hours of the morning on Saturday, February 9, 2013, was worse than anything on screen.

“I can tell what happened from start to finish from that night,” Tapim says, eight years later.

His account is also preserved in his two police witness statements, among hundreds studied as part of The Australian’s new podcast ­series, Shandee’s Story.

The series is investigating the unsolved murder of 23-year-old Shandee Blackburn, the woman Tapim saw doubled over, coughing and gasping for air as she moved towards the gutter clutching her stomach.

Shandee was a stranger to Tapim.

She looked like she’d been punched, but as he raced around the flat to get a better view of the surrounding area, there was no one else to be seen.

Returning to the balcony, he saw the woman had slumped to her hands and knees with her head resting on the gutter.

There was blood on her head and blood pooling on the ground around her.

Tapim grabbed the mobile phone of his girlfriend, Mary Tomarra – pregnant with their first child together – and dialled triple-0 as he ran outside.

In the harrowing audio recording of the call, Tapim’s shock and panic is obvious as he talks to the female ambulance communi­cations operator.

Episode 1 of 'Shandee's Story' is released to subscribers on Friday.

It is being made public on Shandee’s Story, by The Australian’s national chief correspondent Hedley Thomas, with the support of Shandee’s mother, Vicki, and sister, Shannah, who want the brutal facts out there.

Tapim: “Can you just send someone.”

Operator: “Sir, I need you to concentrate. Tell me exactly what’s happened with her.”

Tapim: “Yeah, I’m right next to her now.”

Operator: “How old is she, sir?”

Tapim: “Oh man, she looks young.”

Operator: “Is she breathing sir?”

Tapim: “She doesn’t look like she’s breathing at all.”

There were 23 stab and slash wounds in total on Shandee’s body. Her attacker had targeted her face, neck and chest with such force the blade sheared away part of her scalp and sliced into her larynx, or voice box, preventing her from screaming out. She had been walking home from work alone.

Neighbours emerged from their houses and started to mass at the scene. The operator was empathetic, firm and professional as she told Tapim what to do. It was not going to be enough.

Tapim: “She’s getting faint, she’s getting faint, she’s getting faint. Her pulse is getting faint.”

Operator: “We’re coming as fast as we can.”

Shandee Blackburn, centre, with her mother, Vicki, and sister, Shannah. Picture: Shandee's Story.

The paramedics arrived at 12.26am while Tapim was still on the line with the operator.

Student paramedic Claire Carroll, then 18, knelt in the gutter and rolled Shandee on to her back. She had arrived in the ­ambulance with her mentor paramedic, Chris Langridge, and fellow student paramedic Stuart Gibson. Carroll discovered later that she and Shandee shared a dozen mutual Facebook friends.

Worried onlookers were urging the paramedics to “do that heart thing, do that heart thing”.

One had been slapping Shandee’s back.

Nearby resident David Roberts had been trying to do CPR and mouth-to-mouth before ambos arrived.

Gibson found a weak pulse and tried to clear Shandee’s airway but, distressingly, air kept escaping from the wound on her neck. Carroll followed instructions to do strong, hard chest compressions.

Unavoidably, they were opening up the knife wounds. They loaded Shandee into the ambulance and headed to the hospital.

Donna Hotz watched their ­arrival on CCTV cameras. She was a hospital safety officer, and her daughter Vanessa and Shandee were best friends. Yet Hotz didn’t recognise the young woman’s face; there was too much blood.

Doctors and nurses took over attempts to save her but they were soon taking off their gloves. It was over.

On the life extinct certificate signed by Jackie Tran, the time of death was 12.50am. Medical staff had tried to resuscitate Shandee for 12 minutes after she died.

Witness Ringo Tapim and his partner, Mary, with daughters Ndeesha and Gabey at home in Mackay. Picture: Damien Carty

Tapim was not the only witness that night. Jaspreet Pandher saw, in the headlights of his maxi taxi, a woman struggling with a man on Boddington Street.

It looked like the man was grabbing the woman’s handbag, and that she was badly hurt.

The man then ran off, carrying something. Shandee’s handbag was never found.

Separately, CCTV cameras captured a figure running towards Shandee, and then away again, but not the attack.

READ MORE:The people you’ll hear from, or about, during the podcast

Pandher, a 27-year-old father of two daughters, had worked as a taxi driver in Mackay for almost four years. He didn’t stop.

Instead, he asked a friend, Gurdip Singh, to call the taxi operator and police, and then picked up a fare. When he returned to Boddington Street, a man with a phone was standing over the woman: Tapim, on his emergency call.

Shandee’s mother Vicki would sometimes see Tapim in the months that followed when she brought flowers to the site of the murder, and they talked and developed a bond.

The murder had a big impact on him; four months later, he named his newborn daughter Ndeesha, using the letters of Shandee’s name after she appeared in his dreams and spelled out the name in fire.

Subscribers can access episode one of Shandee’s Story now via the podcast player in The Australian’s app.

For more, go to www.theaustralian.com.au/podcasts/shandees-story