Father, children die in Sydney shooting

Press, 1 August 1989, Page 8

Father, children die in Sydney shooting

NZPA-AAP Sydney Three young children shot dead by their father in an apparent murdersuicide had been the subject of a custody battle, Sydney police said yesterday. The bodies of Mijo Vidovic, aged 29, his sons Branimer, aged 7, Brendan, aged 5 and daughter Jelena, aged 2, were found yesterday morning in a car in bushland at Londonderry in Sydney’s north-west. The two young boys, who had been shot in the head, were slumped across the front seat of the car. The father’s body was lying over the steering wheel with a high powered rifle between his legs and a bullet wound to the head. Jelena had been shot once through the chest and was still strapped into her safety harness in the back seat of the car. , The police said all had been shot with a high powered, .4044, leveraction Winchester rifle shortly after 9 p.m. on Sunday. A man discovered the bodies after noticing the car abandoned on a track in bushland 70m from Taylor Road at 7.30 a.m. yesterday.

f The police said he had walked over / to the car, and saw the body of the - girl. He then walked around the car i where he saw the driver’s door open 1 and legs sticking out. Senior Constable Ray Owston, of the » Penrith Highway Patrol, the first > policeman at the scene, said he was > shocked by what he saw. 1 “Why take children ... there’s no 1 need for this. If something isn’t quite right, you should get the kids the hell 1 out of there,” he said. ' The police said the children’s father had picked them up from their St ; Mary’s home on Sunday afternoon for > his usual, one day a week custody. He said the eldest boy, Branimer, telephoned his mother at 8.30 p.m. , yesterday to say that he and his - brother and sister were on their way home. Thirty minutes later they were dead. The spokesman said the children’s mother had heard radio reports of the murder-suicide yesterday morning and immediately rang the police. She was now under heavy sedation, he said.