The grieving father of a hairdresser who was killed in an underworld attack on a gang mum customer refused to leave the cemetery where his daughter was laid to rest after the Islamic funeral performed for her.
Amneh “Amy” al-Hazouri was laid to rest on Friday, 13 days after gunmen fired 17 bullets into the car she was sitting in while she was driving. The funeral took place at the Lakemba Mosque in south-west Sydney.
As Ms. al-Hazouri sat next to her intended victim, Lametta Fadlallah, 49, she was killed in the crossfire and became a secondary casualty.
Her father, Khaled Hazouri, would repeatedly come and sit in the mud at the edge of the newly dug grave site of his daughter. He appeared worn out and was clearly crying each time he did so.
He didn’t want to leave the grave site at Rookwood cemetery where his daughter was buried.
At the location of Ms. Hazouri’s interment, just inside the fence along a freight train line that backs onto Rookwood Cemetery, he instructed the other mourners, on multiple occasions, to leave him behind.
Mr. Hazouri required the assistance of around six persons in order to rise from the grave, and he did so only to find that the most of the sixty mourners had already departed.
Mr. Hazouri travelled all the way from Beirut to be there as his daughter went for her trip.
Lametta Fadlallah, a friend of the innocent hairstylist Amneh “Amy” al-Hazouri as well as a client of hers, was murdered at the same time as her. It is thought that she was the intended target of the criminal element.
Mr. Hazouri was inconsolable as the casket containing his daughter’s body, which was shrouded in a shroud, was lowered into the grave with the assistance of a ladder that was by Mr. Hazouri’s side.
After offering prayers at the gravesite, an Oman then walked away as a dump truck deposited soil on top of the casket, leaving approximately sixty people still standing there.
Weeping, Mr Hazouri embraced undertaker Ahmad Hraichie.
Mourners laid a big wreath of white flowers, bouquets of flowers, and two wreaths in the shape of hearts on top of the grave while a broken Mr. Hazouri sat down on the ground at the side of the cemetery.