Her skull fractured, 5-week-old Elizabeth Nunes is a tiny victim of crime in a city where fears of rising gang violence in its poorer suburban fringes belies the beautiful postcard image of its harborside heart.
Her father Jeremy Nunes carried her in a harness close to his chest as he walked home from a friend’s house in the southern beachside suburb of Maroubra last Thursday.
Without warning a gang leapt from a car and then beat and kicked him to the ground as he tried to cradle his infant daughter from the blows. Police believe the attack was a case of mistaken identity, motivated by the theft of a mobile phone.
On Monday, Elizabeth was in a hospital recovering from severe head injuries and the seizures brought on by her ordeal. Her father’s face was covered in bruises and grazes.
The attack sparked outrage across Sydney, a city of 4 million and Australia largest.
Residents told talk radio stations that it was no longer safe to walk the streets of some neighborhoods.
Rozita Leoni, of a community lobby group leader, said gangs of males in their teens and early 20s were robbing people and intimidating shopkeepers and families in broad daylight.
”They get full of drugs or alcohol on Thursday, Friday and Saturday … we have this reign of terror,” she said. ”There’s always been a generation of youth, it’s just that this generation of youth now are very vicious, they have no conscience … they’re
dealing drugs openly, they’re bashing people.” But state crime experts insist that Elizabeth’s assault was an isolated incident.
”We haven’t seen any increase in assaults in any area of Sydney in the past 24 months,” said Jackie Fitzgerald, a manager at the Bureau of Crime Research and Statistics for New South Wales state, of which Sydney is the capital.
”We’re certainly not on the back of any crime wave. There will always be horrific incidents of crime, but they don’t necessarily represent an upward trend.” She said that during the past two years assault levels had been stable, while cases of armed and unarmed robbery have dropped significantly.
However, some neighborhoods continue to suffer high levels of crime -which are reported in often lurid detail by local media.
In 2000, Sydney was horrified and questioned its reputation as a peaceful multiracial melting pot when gang of young men of Lebanese descent carried out a string of gang rapes in the city’s western suburbs. The ringleader was jailed for 55 years.
And, police are still hunting a sexual predator who has attacked women in another western suburb this year.
State Premier Bob Carr, who lives in Maroubra and who has campaigned in the past as a tough crime fighter, denounced the latest attack.
”This is pure animal behavior for which no excuses can be entered,” Carr told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.
Doctors said Elizabeth was improving, but they could not rule out long-term effects from her head injures.
By Monday night police had arrested two men, aged 23 and 20, over the attack. A third had walked into a police station with his parents and given himself up. Police were still searching for a man and a woman also believed to be involved. It was not immediately clear what penalty they face if convicted.
Police said the attack appeared to be a case of mistaken identity. The five had been seeking a man who they claim assaulted a woman and stole her mobile phone.
The attackers apparently mistook Nunes for the alleged phone thief and were not aware that he was clutching Elizabeth.
Amid the media frenzy generated by the attack, Nunes has remained stoic, while his wife has joined hospital staff caring for Elizabeth.
”I would like to say that Maroubra to me is still a safe suburb in which to live and I do still feel safe walking down the street,” he told reporters. – Source : Sapa-AP /rm