Toowoomba mum recounts lingering trauma of thwarted home invasion

The Chronicle reached out to victims of crime and asked them to write an open letter to Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk explaining how their life changed after they were visited in the night by teen offenders. This is one mother’s story.

Dear Annastacia Palaszczuk,

In July 2021 we had two teenagers attempt to break into our home in Kearneys Spring at about 1am.

Our sensor lights went off and usually it is just a wandering cat but I got up to check.

I caught the offenders trying to get into our front door and side gate.

My screaming for my husband woke one of our children, our six-year-old daughter, and she had never heard me scream like that.

The thieves ran off and we called the police who were at our door within minutes. They told me that they had been chasing teens in the area all night.

They had the dog squad with them who picked up the scent and followed it to the corner of Spring and Kearney streets before they lost them.

My daughter has been that traumatised by the event that she now suffers from extreme anxiety and needs to take medication as a result. She is still seeing a child psychologist almost 18 months after the attempted break in.

She cannot sleep in her bed anymore and has to sleep with us. She cannot walk to the other end of our house alone because she is scared.

My husband cannot work away as our daughter is petrified to not have him home in case ‘the bad people come back’.

This affects my husband’s employment as well.

To say our daughter has been psychologically impacted by the crime is an understatement.

A child as young as that should not be medicated for anxiety when these perpetrators should be locked away and not able to reoffend.

It is totally out of hand, when there are Polair choppers in town every week.

I am constantly on the edge, because you don’t know if you are going to be side swiped by a stolen car.

We do not feel safe in our own home.