Anna Horenshawm was 28-years-old and pregnant when she was sentenced to in November 2015 after she stabbed her 67-year-old roommate Zvonimir Petrovski to death.
For years her family had tried to help her as she battled mental illness and drug addiction.
Below is an extract from the book ' written by Anna's mother, Mary K. Pershall, who details her heart-rending personal experience of raising a beloved child who couldn't cope with reality, and ended up in a maximum-security prison convicted of murder.
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As John prepared for their father–daughter date, I grew nervous, because Anna had got up from her couch nest and gone into the bungalow a couple of hours before, announcing that she was going to dress in something special. She hadn’t emerged for a smoke. It was suspiciously quiet in there. Most likely she was asleep, but the rat of worry was gnawing away.
So, just as I’d done a hundred times before, I went in to make sure she was alive. And this time, she barely seemed to be. She was sitting on the floor, her back slumped against her bed, and she was surrounded by blister packs of medication.
I grabbed her arm and shook it. She didn’t respond. This in itself wasn’t unusual, but her eyes were rolled back in her head and her lips were blue, so I called triple 0.
Anna and her mother. Photo: Supplied Source: Supplied
By the time the ambos arrived, a man and a woman, we’d put Anna in the recovery position as instructed, and she was conscious enough to mumble that she didn’t want to go to hospital, she just wanted to die. But with that thought in her head and her heart rate high, the male paramedic explained to her that they were obliged to take her in. The female paramedic inspected the blister packs and found they were mainly aspirin, with only a few of the tablets missing. Anna couldn’t or wouldn’t say what else she’d ingested to cause unconsciousness.
The male officer asked me if I’d like to come with them in the ambulance. ‘Uhhh . . .’ I responded, ‘not really.’ He seemed surprised and a little rebuffed that I’d declined his invitation to accompany my suicidal daughter. But some vital part of me had been squashed into unwilling submission on the day that I rang the police and Georgia had given me hope that Anna might be helped, only to be turned away hours later by a mental health nurse. Over and over, I replayed the question the gatekeeper had put to me in sour tones: ‘What good would a few days in the psych ward do?’ I longed to shoot a few questions back to her, although I knew my voice would not contain her authority. It would be a strangled cry: ‘Don’t you see how much it would mean to me to have a few
days off? Do you have any idea how exhausting it is to try to keep a beloved child alive? Why can’t you realise what an energising gift it would be, if you gave me some help and kept her safe for even half a week?’
That’s why I said no to the kind-hearted ambulance officer. I couldn’t bear the thought of spending another dreary day hanging around the hospital, only to be handed back a sobered-up Anna with promises of visits from the CAT team.
With her whisked off in an ambulance, I could at least have a few hours to myself, knowing she was in the hands of people who would keep her from killing herself. I would sit under our gum tree, sip a coffee and look at the sky, maybe read a book.
John went with Anna to the hospital. When they arrived she was fully awake, and fought like the devil not to be taken in.
That evening, just as I’d anticipated, she was back with us. Like the abused children Anna read about, who had so
little control over their own lives, I was sad, resentful and angry.
If you or someone you know needs help you can contact on 13 11 14, or on 1300 368 186.
