Ariel Bombara's message was unambiguous.
Bravely fronting the media just days after her father Mark Bombara's murderous actions took the lives of Jennifer Petelczyc and her teenage daughter Gretl, the 27-year-old wanted to convey a simple message about the horrific chain of events that led to Friday's deadly shooting.
"There needs to be a massive systemic change made to protect women to ensure that this never happens again," she said.
"Authorities should have helped us to stop him and they failed."
She and her mother had repeatedly warned police about her father's disturbing behaviour, about his collection of guns and the fact that one – a Glock handgun — was missing.
"My mother and I made it clear that our lives were at risk – we were repeatedly ignored, repeatedly failed," she said.
Her voice at times wavering with emotion, Ms Bombara was nonetheless eloquent and articulate and her statement was a powerful one.
While she didn't want to be drawn on the details, she outlined how she and her mother had fled the family home in late March in fear of their lives.
In fear of her father, whose gun collection amounted to 13 firearms, and who lived with the family in the affluent riverside suburb of Mosman Park.
Restraining order plea
Having escaped, the Bombara women spoke with police three times in the following week, Ms Bombara said.
They wanted a temporary family violence restraining order, but police said no, she said.
Loading...They wanted to let police know about Bombara's gun collection, and the fact that one was missing. Again, she said, no action was taken.
"By that point we felt completely helpless and I had to focus on getting mum to safety," Ms Bombara said.
Since the shocking events of Friday, the government has been at pains to point out it's already in the process of gun reform.
Premier Roger Cook and Police Minister Paul Papalia have said they want the tough new planned laws strengthened further in the wake of the tragedy.
As well as restricting the number of guns a person can own, Papalia would like to give police the discretion to remove firearms from people "where there's the potential for harm to be done".
Ms Bombara said that measure alone would not have prevented a tragedy.
"It is my unwavering belief that even without his guns, my father would have committed a horrific act of violence [and] likely would have claimed lives," she said.
"What my father did was an act of domestic violence."
Police, government response in spotlight
Her emotional account of events that occurred almost two months before the shooting has raised fresh questions about the government's explanation of the tragedy and the WA Police response to her pleas for help.
Mr Papalia has said Ms Bombara contacted police on March 31, not March 30 as she says.
Mr Papalia said Ms Bombara "did not report an offence, or seek a response at that time in relation to anything that had happened historically."
Ms Bombara's recollections are different.
"[On] each occasion I alerted officers to my father's guns and told them my mother and I felt there was a real and imminent threat to our lives," she said.
Far from not seeking a response, Ms Bombara said she asked WA Police for a 72-hour restraining order but was told no.
The question of what police did in response to the warnings Ms Bombara gave is now the subject of an internal investigation.
Just hours after Ms Bombara's statement, WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch fronted the media to explain what he knew, including that a family violence incident report had been lodged when the mother and daughter first went to a police station.
Addressing the Bombara women's request for a temporary restraining order, Commissioner Blanch said the circumstances at the time did not warrant such a measure.
"A police order is issued where we are concerned about imminent threat or risk to a person, whether or not they are staying there, and we have to separate those people," he said.
An investigation will now examine whether the decisions made by officers were correct, based on the information they had at the time.
"I want to remind people that this happened some seven weeks earlier to this tragedy," Commissioner Blanch said.
The commissioner could not say why police took no action on the missing handgun at the time, but said that would form part of the investigation.
Further action needed
Counting Dead Women Australia said the deaths of Jennifer and Gretl took to 31 the number of women killed by violence so far this year.
The federal government has been working on a National Plan to End Domestic Violence since 2022, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has conceded family violence is a "national crisis".
Federal Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth, who is part of the review into the prevention of domestic violence, said it "certainly" appeared the response of WA Police in the lead-up to the Floreat murders was inadequate.
She said Ms Bombara and her mother were let down.
"It certainly seems that she did not get the response that she needed from police," she told News Breakfast.
"And so, it's right that the West Australian government looks into this and it's right that the police commissioner looks at what could have been done to prevent this tragedy."
But Ms Bombara's story also speaks to a fundamental societal problem in need of a fresh solution.
Federal MP Kate Chaney, who holds the seat of Curtin where the murders took place, put it succinctly.
"We definitely need a situation where women are taken seriously when they have a reasonable fear of violence," she said.
"We see it again and again, that the system as a whole is not delivering."
Ariel Bombara also wants the fundamentals to change, not just the reform of gun laws.
"Men will kill regardless of what weapon they use.
"If they want to, they will find a way."
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