- When Ashlee Byrne, 32, from Adelaide, SA, met Andrew, it was love at first sight.
- Ashlee was getting ready to marry her dream when he stabbed her with a knife.
- Now with her family’s love and support, Ashlee is rebuilding her future.
Here Ashlee tells her story in her own words.
Happy 30th birthday to me,’ I sighed, tucking into the pizza I’d ordered.
It was April 2020 and, thanks to the Covid lockdowns, I was celebrating at home instead of out with friends and family.
But I was looking to the future, when the pandemic was over, and my fiancé Andrew, then 31, and I could build our lives together.
We’d met after I’d got a job at a bar four years earlier.
‘I just found the man I’m going to marry.’
I’d made friends with the chef, and he invited me to his place for drinks and to meet his friend Andrew, who was also a chef.
From the moment I met him, we got along like a house on fire.
‘I just found the man I’m going to marry,’ I told my friend the very next day.
Falling for his quirky personality, I loved his incredible cooking and the amazing homemade gnocchi he whipped up.
Around the two year mark, we were strolling along a boardwalk near Adelaide Oval where Ed Sheeran was playing live, when I wandered a little ahead.
Turning to look for Andrew as the music drifted on the air, I saw he was down on one knee proposing, and looking hopeful.
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Of course I said yes!
The best is yet to come, I thought.
We moved in with Andrew’s parents in September 2018, while we saved for a house deposit.
We scrimped and saved, but everything felt so perfect. Until it wasn’t.
Almost two years later we were still living at his parents’ place.
‘The best is yet to come.’
I was working as a retail assistant and Andrew had been jumping between restaurants, wanting to work at the best.
It wasn’t regular money though.
Worried, I suggested he find a full-time role but he was focused on his dream.
Around then, I noticed a shift in him.
At night, he’d lie awake jumping at noises outside.
‘It’s just the neighbours,’ I’d say, trying to calm him down.
But he was never convinced and instead lay awake battling his thoughts.
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In the days after my 30th birthday, Andrew seemed to be in a world of his own.
Waking up on Anzac Day in 2020, three days after I turned 30, I was lying on our bed watching TV.
Coming in and out of the room a few times, Andrew left the door open as he went.
He seems a bit off, I thought.
The third time he entered the room, he closed the door behind him.
‘He seems a bit off.’
But then he stood motionless facing the door for a few seconds.
And when he turned around, he stared at me blankly, like he was looking through me.
In a blink he moved towards me, pinning me down on the bed.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked, confused.
Andrew had never been violent with me before.
Then I saw the flash of a blade – he was holding a kitchen knife above me.
Lunging, he stabbed me in the right side of my abdomen, before taking a few steps back.
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Looking down, I saw blood pouring from my chest and pooling on the bed spread.
He lunged again and again, the knife piercing me, and I desperately looked towards the door.
I struggled with him – grabbing his arm and trying to escape his hold.
‘He’s trying to kill me!’ I screamed over and over, so his mum and dad might come and help me.
Then Andrew locked the door.
‘If I don’t get out of here I’m going to die.’
Soon I heard Andrew’s dad banging on the other side, shouting for Andrew to unlock the door.
If I don’t get out of here I’m going to die, I realised.
Then, I felt the blade go through one side of my arm and out the other.
Finally turning the key, his dad managed to push open the door.
Rushing to me, he pulled me away from Andrew and towards the safety of the hallway.
As I crumpled to the ground by the door frame, and Andrew locked himself in the room, I could feel my heartbeat in every part of my body.
Andrew’s dad attended to my wounds while his mum called triple-0.
Still in shock, everything felt numb until the ambos arrived just minutes later. Police came too.
As the ambos tended to my terrible injuries, trying to stem the bleeding and holding the gaping wounds together, Andrew was arrested and escorted out.
‘I’m sorry,’ he sobbed, walking past me.
Taken to Flinders Medical Centre Emergency Department, a hospital trauma unit, I was wheeled into theatre. Waking up in ICU, I pleaded with nurses.
‘I want my mum,’ I said, thinking of my family, which included her, my stepdad Robert and little sister Molly.
And waking up again later, my mum Kellie, 51, was by my side.
‘I’m right here, you’re safe now,’ she said tearfully.
I had a cut right through my left arm, had a ruptured tricep and diaphragm, a collapsed lung, and severed nerves and tendons.
My spleen and part of my bowel had to be removed to save my life.
Mum stayed with me, and my stepdad Robert sat on the front steps of the hospital each day, waiting for text updates.
After 12 days, I was allowed to go home with Mum and Robert to recover.
Robert had arranged for my things to be collected from Andrew’s place.
While I slowly healed physically, I couldn’t look at my scars without seeing the knife and Andrew’s face.
How could the man I was meant to marry have done this to me?
My life had changed completely and it all made no sense.
I was utterly crushed, and I felt for his family too. It was a huge shock for all of us.
As I battled to come to terms with my new future, I faced a wait for the matter to come before court.
In October 2022, Andrew Shearing, 33, of Mitchell Park, pleaded guilty to a charge of aggravated causing serious harm with intent and fronted SA’s Supreme Court.
I will always feel like a part of me died that day, I told Andrew in my victim impact statement. And for that I can never forgive you. You were supposed to be my forever, my happily ever after… You have left a hole in my heart that honestly won’t ever heal.
The court heard he’d taken methamphetamine the day before the attack and, although he wasn’t under the influence at the time, he had a history of drug use that had led to him suffering from drug-inducedpsychosis.
Judge Justice Kevin Nicholson said Andrew had shown remorse and contrition, and gotten clean.
He accepted the attack was ‘out of character,’ but said his unprovoked ‘extreme violence’ had ‘destroyed’ my life and his psychosis had been self-induced through the use of drugs, meaning Andrew was responsible for what he’d done.
The judge told Andrew, ‘In a matter of seconds and for no justification whatsoever, you destroyed your former partner’s old life and left her with an existence which every day presents difficult challenges.’
He jailed Andrew for eight years and six months, with a non-parole period of six years and 10 months.
Afterwards, I hoped the sentence would deter other perpetrators, and protect other women from what I’ve been through.
Now, with my family’s love and support, I’m looking to heal from my scars and rebuild my future.
