Lee Lovell’s wife was murdered by a teenager. He hopes the Queensland election will spark change

On Boxing Day 2022, Lee Lovell’s life changed forever.

A 17-year-old on a three-day drug bender broke into his family’s North Lakes home in the middle of the night with a knife.

Mr Lovell confronted the intruder and in the chaos that ensued his wife, Emma, ​​was stabbed through the heart and died in their front yard.

Lee was stabbed twice and survived.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get over that, to be honest,” Mr Lovell said.

“What would you do? Would you grab the baseball bat? Would you have time to get it? What happens if I’m in the kitchen and the kids are in the bedroom?

The moment of senseless violence altered the course of the Lovell family’s lives and thrust a grieving husband and father into the spotlight as the reluctant face of Queensland’s youth crime crisis.

The case was a tipping point in public sentiment about the government’s handling of youth crime, which is shaping up as one of the major issues that will decide next month’s state election.

Emma Lovell’s killer was on lease and had already racked up 84 convictions on his criminal history, including unlawful entry of a premises on 16 occasions.

The teenager was convicted of her murder and sentenced to 14 years.

Mr Lovell is part of the growing chorus of Queenslanders who say they no longer feel safe in their own home.

He said the punishment was not good enough and he does not believe justice has been served.

“A lot of people have been speaking about lease as a last resort and not letting people out, but that’s sort of too late for us now,” he said.

“I get that you probably shouldn’t be locking everyone up, but I think there comes a line where you have got to start saying, ‘look you have done something pretty terrible, you need to be locked up for that’.

“If it was his 18th birthday we wouldn’t be quibbling about this. Everyone would be like, ‘He’s been locked up for 20 years, how great is that?’.”

The state of play

While youth crime as a whole has slightly decreased over the last five years, some serious offenses are happening more often.

Between 2020 and 2024, the number of juveniles charged with unlawful use of a motor vehicle, break and enter, assault and armed robbery increased, according to the Department of Youth Justice.

Detective Inspector Paul Fletcher, who oversees the Gold Coast police district’s child protection unit, said the problem was being fueled by one-upmanship on social media.

“The severity of youth offending has definitely increased in the last few years, where young criminals are committing more brazen and violent crimes,” he said.

“It is a fine line between keeping the community safe, but also giving these young offenders a chance to rehabilitate and get their lives back on track.”

A ‘race to the bottom’

The Australian Human Rights Commission believes that fine line has been crossed and is calling for a complete overhaul of the youth justice system.

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National Children’s Commissioner, Anne Holmonds, said Queensland has some of the toughest laws in the country and has already locked up more young people than New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and the ACT combined.

She said the fact that serious offending was getting worse was proof that incarceration doesn’t make the community safer and said governments should instead focus on addressing the underlying causes of youth crime.

“Fundamentally, we have misunderstood the nature of these problems and we need to understand that the justice systems will not — can not — fix the problems of offending by children.

“We have taken these issues in the wrong direction and now we need to own up to our mistakes and say we need to change course.”

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‘What change is there?’

As Lee Lovell nears the second anniversary of his wife’s death, that’s a tough pill to swallow.

“You just think there’s another month gone by and this last one was really challenging to deal with.”

With every high-profile crime involving juveniles, he is forced to relive that night in 2022.

Having grown increasingly uncomfortable with his family’s tragedy being politicized, he has distanced himself from the Voice for Victims movement, but still believes things need to change.

While he doesn’t know what the solution to youth crime is, he said it was obvious the current situation isn’t working.

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“I’m not surprised that we’re still hearing about this constantly — youths terrorizing people and families and the amount of crimes that are still happening,” Mr Lovell said.

“I just thought that maybe after what happened to us that things would settle down a bit.

“That’s all people are seeing, the same revolving door over and over. Until you change that, the public aren’t going to be happy, are they?”

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