By Casey Neill
Doveton woman Rani Featherston loved and was loved.
Cousin Reagan Radford said the 34-year-old was beautiful, kind, a comedian and full of life.
Christian Bain-Singh pleaded guilty to murdering her in Lace Street, Doveton, on 2 April 2014.
On Monday 19 June the Supreme Court of Victoria heard through victim impact statements that the physical and emotional toll the crime had taken on Rani’s family, from depression and anxiety to intense fear and insomnia.
Rani lived in Oleander Street, Doveton, with her father Kevin. She’d cooked him dinner just hours before her stabbing death about 500 metres from her home.
She attended Doveton Primary School and Doveton Technical College, left school at 15 to work in retail, and at one point married a Romanian man and lived in his home country for about six months.
Kevin said that when he divorced from her mother, Rani took over caring for the family.
“I haven’t been able to grieve. I waited for years for someone to be caught”
Rani’s mother, Christine, died a year after her murder “of a broken heart”. Bain-Singh was not arrested until 2016.
“I haven’t been able to grieve. I waited for years for someone to be caught,” her older brother Matthew told the court.
Younger brother Aaron said Rani was like a mother to him and “was the one person I could depend on”.
He said his whole life was in Doveton but that it was now the place where Rani’s life was taken.
“Because of this I cut myself off from the world I knew, from the world I had trusted,” he said.
“I think about how she would have feared for her life as she was laying there all alone in the dark”
When Bain-Singh was arrested Aaron “felt great, but then I felt deceived”.
“He had been living so close that whole time,” he said.
“Every day I think about what he did to her that night.
“I think about how she tried to run but collapsed.
“I think about how she would have feared for her life as she was laying there all alone in the dark.”
Rani’s niece Olivia was 11 when her aunt died and didn’t leave the house for months “because I was so scared that something like this would happen to me”.
“I will never be able to forgive you for not only taking my auntie’s soul away, but slowly taking mine too”
The court heard that she started struggling at school and fell in with “the wrong crowd”.
“I will never be able to forgive you for not only taking my auntie’s soul away, but slowly taking mine too,” she said to Bain-Singh.
Justice Christopher Beale will sentence Bain-Singh on Friday 28 July.
