THE details of the final, terrfiying moments of Nadia Cameron’s life make for difficult, but essential, reading.
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The details, as revealed in an inquest on Tuesday, starkly illustrate the horror that played out in the lounge room of Elie Issa’s Kelso home on that winter’s night in 2015.
The clinical listing of Ms Cameron’s injuries bring home the terrible damage the bullets inflicted on her body.
But as difficult as it is to read such detail, we can only imagine how much worse it must have been for Ms Cameron’s family to finally learn what had happened to their daughter, mother and sister.
The shocking murder-suicide that claimed the lives of Nadia Cameron and Elie Issa has left a mark on Bathurst’s psyche that will never be fully erased.
The pair was a “glamour” couple around town and even many of those locals who did not know them certainly knew of them.
Ms Cameron and Ms Issa had a liking for the finer things in life and mixed in powerful circles. But, as Tuesday’s inquest brutally confirmed, we can never know for sure what is going on behind closed doors.
The inquest’s findings painted Mr Issa as a controlling, jealous man who could not bear the thought of his relationship with Ms Cameron ending.
The details of his crime reveal a sadistic killer who first shot his victim from behind before shooting her three more times as she lay injured and helpless.
That picture is a far cry from the genial host that greeted so many locals and visitors every day at his William Street cafe – a difference that many in Bathurst still have trouble reconciling.
But regardless of how Nadia Cameron and Elie Issa lived their lives, in death they are no different to the hundreds of shameful domestic violence cases we have seen both before and after them.
They are a reminder that domestic violence can occur in any town, in any relationship.
The crisis of domestic violence in our country does not discriminate.
The victims of domestic violence are not always obvious, and not always who we might picture them to be.
This inquest has shone a light in one of the dark shadows we might prefer not to think about.
But we must think about it, we must acknowledge it and we must fix it. We owe it to the memory of Nadia Cameron.