'My son did not want to die'

'My son did not want to die'

TYLER Cassidy's mother, Shani, sits at the table where her teenage son used to eat dinner most nights with his family and asks herself a question she cannot answer: Why?

"Why, why has this happened? How could this happen  he was just a normal kid," she says. "He had a lot to live for. My son did not want to die, that's not what he wanted."

Shani Cassidy at her home yesterday, surrounded by  tributes to her son Tyler, who was shot dead by police last week.


The adjoining room is crammed full of flowers and other tributes. It has become a memorial for her youngest son who was shot dead by police on December 11.

Tyler, 15, was armed with two knives stolen from a Kmart store and police insist they acted in self-defence when they shot at him at a Northcote skate park.


But his inconsolable mother says this explanation won't do. She won't rest until all police in Victoria  including the "cowboys" who shot her son  are armed with Tasers.

Mrs Cassidy told The Age she had been personally informed by police that 10 bullets were fired at Tyler and that six bullets, including the one that fatally penetrated his chest, hit his body "in a matter of four seconds".

"He would have been so scared. He was just a kid not a Nazi at all," she says as her fiance, Greg Taylor, sits beside her. "People are very quick to judge on a little information."

There is much pain as she recalls the night Tyler died. "It was all over in a few seconds," she says. "There was no negotiation, there was no ringing me  if the police rang me I could have got his brother to go to him, he could've calmed him down and comforted him. It wouldn't have ended like that."

Mrs Cassidy is determined to use her moral force as a mourning mother to help improve police tactics in such situations. She fervently believes if the four police who confronted her highly agitated son last week had been better trained and armed with Tasers, Tyler would be alive today.

She urges Victoria Police command to also consider using nets and tranquillisers, as commonly used in Europe, to disarm people in her son's situation. The family has employed lawyers Galbally O'Bryan to represent their legal interests.

Her family's story, she insists, is a tragedy that could have been averted. She keeps posing the same question. "He was fine in the morning  why, why did this happen?"

Mrs Cassidy's grief is compounded by the fact that she herself called the police for assistance after Tyler came home "very upset" and with blood on his elbows after a day out with friends in Eltham.

He'd left home in the morning and returned briefly "for about 15 minutes" that evening before going out for a walk. She never saw him alive again.

"When I rang the police about 9 o'clock or 9.05pm, I said, 'Look, my son has left the house and he's very upset  maybe he's on his way to the Northcote train station. When you do your police rounds tonight can you look out for him and bring him home?' "

Instead, she buried him a week later  on the very day he was due to leave for Queensland to spend Christmas holidays with his cousins. He had been planning what presents to get them a week in advance.

Mrs Cassidy cannot reconcile the theory that Tyler had a death wish. She shudders at the very notion of "suicide by cop", a line of inquiry the police are believed to be following.

While she concedes her son had a short fuse and sometimes was quick to anger, he was neither depressed nor had he any ongoing mental health problems, said Mrs Cassidy, who is a nurse.

She says, however, on the night he left for a walk, he took a knife from the kitchen and put it in his bedroom. She does not know why "but he was not violent towards me. He was just very upset.

"I've asked his friends and his mates: Was he sad or unhappy at home? They said, 'No, everything was fine.' We'd just moved into this big house in Northcote  he was very proud to bring his little friends here. He finally had his own bedroom." "

Mrs Cassidy also dismisses the suggestion that her son was still grieving for his father, Ian, who died from lung cancer four years ago. "People need to know 'why', so they are talking about his dad  but Tyler was coming to terms with that."

In the missing hour between leaving home and confronting police Tyler texted his brother at least twice. The messages were garbled but even now "his brother won't talk about it".

Every night since Tyler died, Mrs Cassidy has visited the skate park where her youngest last drew breath. She does not know when she will stop going there.

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