The mother of the three siblings killed in the Oatlands crash said she has forgiven the alleged drunk driver.
Anthony, Angelina and Sienna Abdallah were walking with four other children along a footpath on Bettington Road on Saturday evening when 29-year-old Samuel Davidson struck them with his Mitsubishi Triton ute.
The three children and their cousin Veronique Sakr died at the scene. The three other children were taken to The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, with an 11-year-old boy remaining in an induced coma.
On Monday, the siblings’ mother Leila Abdallah said the incident still felt “unreal”.
“To be fully honest with you, it feels very unreal, I still don’t feel it’s true. I feel that they are still with me, I’m still waiting for them to come home,” she told reporters at the scene of the alleged crime.
“The guy, I know he was [allegedly] drunk, driving on this street. I can’t hate him. I don’t want to see him, [but] I don’t hate him.
“I think in my heart, I forgive him, but I want the court to be fair and right – it’s all about fairness.
“I’m not going to hate him, because that’s not who we are and that’s not what our religion tells us.”
Sakr’s family said the 11-year-old girl was “full of life” and “had a maturity well beyond her young years”.
The family said in a statement: “We are devastated by the tragic and senseless loss of our beautiful girl. Words cannot describe the pain we feel for all the families impacted by this tragedy.”
The loss of the four children has been widely shared on social media in Lebanon, with the country’s foreign ministry instructing the country’s ambassador to Australia to follow up on the incident and aid the grieving families, The Daily Telegraph reported.
An NSW Police spokesperson urged members of the public to be vigilant when donating online after the agency received reports of fundraisers soliciting donations for the children’s funerals.
