The last words a young man told his mother as he lay dying after being shot by a gunman who had sprayed more than 220 bullets in a NSW street was that he loved her.
An emotional Cindy Tonks told the Newcastle Supreme Court on Tuesday during a sentence hearing for the gunman, Bradley Jason Mark White, 42, how her son, Byron, knew his life was slipping away.
"He said, 'Mum, this is it'," Mrs Tonks said in tears when reading her victim impact statement.
"The last words my beautiful son ever spoke to me were, 'I love you Mum'.
"I will never forget the look on his face as he left this life. That look is forever etched in my memory."
Mrs Tonks said her son, 20, had been the victim of a "callous, dangerous act" and she felt she had failed him because a mother's job was to protect their children.
She suffered from constant flashbacks of being back in the house at Cutler Drive, Wyong, on the Central Coast, on March 17, 2020, when bullets were flying around her and her husband, Albert, as Byron lay dying on the floor.
Mrs Tonks feared they were in danger of being shot dead at any minute.
She told how Byron had been an eccentric, unpredictable and unconventional young man who told her as he lay dying to make sure the family looked after Bazza, his bearded dragon.
When Byron said he couldn't feel his legs, his mum offered to give him her legs and he told her she needed her legs to go running.
Albert Tonks told the court Byron had been a loveable larrikin, the type of person who loved a beer, was the life of the party and would answer the door naked if he knew Seventh Day Adventists were in the street.
"Why, why, why? Why was my son taken from me? I miss him so much," said Mr Tonks, who had been shot in the shoulder and desperately performed CPR on Byron.
White had been high on ice and was paranoid people were out to get him before becoming enraged when his 17-year-old neighbour arrived home because the teenager often played music from his ute.
White crossed the road about 6pm armed with a homemade spear and set the ute on fire twice after the teenager ran inside to hide.
He then returned to his front porch and fired at least 226 bullets over an hour.
Byron was killed when he was hit in the chest as he stood inside a house across the road.
A neighbour, Pamela Dickinson, was shot in the back after she saw White and turned to hide inside her home.
White was found guilty by a jury in October of one count of murder, two counts of discharging a firearm with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and four counts of recklessly shooting at a dwelling.
White admitted being the gunman but claimed he had been mentally ill at the time and did not know what he was doing was wrong.
During the shooting rampage, White switched from a shortened .22-calibre rifle to a more powerful Carcano bolt-action rifle because he was frustrated at not being able to get a clear shot because everyone in the street was hiding.
White claimed he initially aimed up to "put the wind up" his neighbours, but "I knew it was f***ing serious ... I was trying to do 'em, kill em."
"I was angry, I was rageful, I was f***ing high as well. I was all the emotions.
White will be sentenced in February.
Australian Associated Press
