Coroner’s court hears of Karina Lock’s murder at McDonald’s restaurant

Long before she was chased into a McDonald’s restaurant and murdered in cold blood, Maryborough mother Karina Lock was a dead woman walking - her demise planned by the man who once claimed to love her. SPECIAL REPORT.

Murdered mother of four Karina Lock. Photo supplied

Chased into a McDonald’s restaurant and gunned down in front of terrified families.

That’s the moment that would bring Maryborough mother Karina Lock’s desperate struggle to escape the clutches of her volatile husband out into the open.

Behind closed doors however, she’d been cheating death for many years.

A coronial inquest into the terrible tragedy at Helensvale on September 10, 2015, would reveal Stephen Lock had long been plotting her demise.

Diary entries, believed to have been started after the couple separated and detailed in the findings released earlier this month, outlined “considerable premeditation of killing his wife and other family members”.

The chilling nature of his private writings was matched only by the words Karina was heard screaming in the moments before he finally won.

On the day she was killed, Karina, 49, had agreed to meet her estranged husband after he said he wanted to give their daughter a present.

Fearing for her safety, she asked that they meet in a public place on the Gold Coast, where she’d relocated, out of fear for their safety.

The trio had spend spent about an hour together before moving to another location and returning to the car park at McDonald’s where his car was parked.

Court documents reveal about 9am bystander David Udinga heard a loud noise and a woman screaming “Help me, help me”.

Karina Lock and friend Kerry Zipperer, 48. Stephen Lock shot his wife Karina and then himself at a McDonalds on the Gold Coast. Pic Megan Slade

He saw the pair struggling in the car before Karina managed to break free despite her husband’s attempts to pull her back.

She then ran to the undercover dining area and told those there “he’s going to kill me”.

Mr Udinga ran to the car and told Lock to stay in the car and drop the gun.

However, Lock pointed the gun at Mr Udinga’s head and said “do you want to die?”

Lock then followed his wife into the restaurant, grabbed her in a chokehold and fired the gun, before turning the weapon on himself.

She died instantly. He later died in hospital.

The serial number on the gun had been removed and police were unable to determine how it came to be Lock’s possession.

What was clear however, in the findings handed down in Southport by Deputy State Coroner Jane Bentley, was that Lock had form and a protection order had been in place.

He was said to have suffered from a psychiatric illness, abused drugs and alcohol and his “mental illness and domestic abuse escalated in the later years of their relationship.”

Puller St house in Maryborough where the Lock family lived for many years up until a year ago. Stephen Lock shot his wife Karina and then himself at a McDonalds on the Gold Coast. Pic Megan Slade

The protection order, current against Mr Lock at the time of the murder, was taken out in November 2013 after he made threats to burn down the family home in Puller Street, Maryborough.

Ms Bentley found that, ‘overall there were examples where support services, health systems and the Queensland Police Service provided a high level of assistance and support to Ms Lock’.

“However, the support provided by services was insufficient to protect her from Mr Lock as was the Domestic Violence Protection Order which was in force,” she found.

“A more integrated approach may have made a difference to the tragic outcome, however, it is unlikely to have done so.”

Ms Bentley said reforms to domestic abuse services and laws continued to be identified and implemented and were the subject of a task force chaired by former judge Margaret McMurdo.

Originally published as Coroner’s court hears of Karina Lock’s murder at McDonald’s restaurant