🕯️ Family, Friends and Her Baby Son Unite in an Emotional Tribute to Jana Armstrong, as the Community Continues to Mourn
Friends, family, strangers and the infant son of a woman allegedly killed by her former partner have held a memorial in her honour.
Hundreds of people dressed in green, 30-year-old Jana Armstrong’s favourite colour, for a candlelight vigil outside the Toowoomba City Hall on Friday night.
Armstrong was last seen at a property on Gordon Ave in Newtown, Toowoomba, on July 7. Desperate search efforts uncovered the mother’s body off a rural road about an hour’s drive north five days later.
Her death sparked calls to help bring an end to domestic violence, which Armstrong’s sister Faith Isaacs renewed in her speech at the vigil.
“No family should have to go through what ours has,” Isaacs said while cradling her young nephew.
“Domestic violence doesn’t just take one victim. It leaves children without parents, families with unimaginable grief and communities heartbroken.”
She hopes that Armstrong’s story will help “encourage people to speak up” and get help for themselves or others experiencing domestic violence.
“We miss you Jana, every single day,” Isaacs said.
“We will always love her, always remember her and will never stop saying her name.”
Isaacs and her husband, Michael, are raising Armstrong’s son after the sisters formed a pact while Isaacs was grieving the loss of her daughter just months prior, The Guardian reported.
The inseparable pair agreed if one were to die, their children would be cared for by the other.
The local state MP and Treasurer David Jantzki said too many women have suffered because of domestic violence and named two other alleged victims in Toowoomba over the past 18 months.
“Every 11 days a woman is killed by someone she trusts in our country,” Janetzki said.
“These are women we have gone to school with, they are women we have worked with, we have played sports with, we share our everyday lives with them.”
Police arrested Armstrong’s former partner, 48-year-old Dharminder Singh, hours after her body was discovered and charged him with domestic violence murder.
He was refused bail and will return to court on September 14.
