A man has been arrested for murdering a student while she spoke to her sister on Facetime
A man has been arrested on suspicion of murdering a 21-year-old student while she was on FaceTime with her sister.
Israeli-born Aiia Maasarwe, who was studying Chinese and English on a six month exchange at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia had been out at a comedy club with friends on Tuesday before she was brutally killed. Following the night out, the student got on a tram at Bourke Street, but when she got off in the Bundoora area, north of the city, she was attacked.
21yo Aiia Maasarwe was 1km from her Bundoora home when she was brutally murdered in a suspected random attack, say police. “This was a horrendous attack inflicted on a completely innocent victim.” Public urged to help find her killer @theheraldsun pic.twitter.com/BcYVeqYRMz
- Aneeka Simonis (@AneekaSimonis) January 17, 2019
Victoria Police confirmed a 20-year-old was arrested in the suburb of Greensborough, near to where Aiia's body was found at 7am the day after her attack. She was discovered by passers-by, having sustained injuries that indicated she had been "seriously assaulted". The exact circumstances surrounding the student's death are not yet clear according to police, but they are investigating whether it was a sexually motivated crime.
Detective Inspector Andrew Stamper, who's been working on the case, confirmed that Aiia had been FaceTiming her sister at the moment she was assaulted. Back in Israel on the other end of the phone, the young woman's sister "heard the sound of the phone falling to the ground and heard some voices", the officer said.
She quickly alerted police.
A T-shirt and a hat with '1986' printed on the front were found in bushes near Aiia's body and are believed to belong to the killer, however it's not known if they have a link to the man currently in police custody.
Appealing to the public prior to this recent arrest, Detective Inspector Stamper said: "Someone in the community knows about this. Someone has gone home on Tuesday night, or in the early hours of Wednesday morning, maybe with blood on them, missing items of clothing. Somebody knows about this."
A vigil was held for the young woman at Melbourne's Parliament House on Thursday, which was attended by Aiia's dad, Saeed Maasarwe.
"I want to appreciate all the people here, all the community," the grieving father said. "She loved this city and the university … very much."
Aiia, tragically enough, is not the only woman to have been murdered while walking home in the suburbs of Melbourne in recent months. Back in June last year, 22-year-old up-and-coming comedian Eurydice Dixon was raped and murdered while walking home from a gig in the city's central business district.
Eurydice's murder, which took place in a park just a few hundred metres from her home, sparked outrage and widespread debate after police used it as an example of why women should "take responsibility for [their] safety" and "exercise situational awareness".
On social media, one user questioned why we aren't instead asking "men [to take] responsibility for their behaviour?", and why society isn't taking responsibility "for failing to teach men not to be violent".
Another asked that Victoria Police "developed some 'situational awareness'" of their own.
I would LOVE it if @VictoriaPolice developed some "situational awareness" by realising that:
1) rape is a situation 4 which perpetrators r 100% responsible &
2) telling women 2 modify behaviour does not make women safer, but does discourage victims reporting & increase self-blame- Nina Funnell (@ninafunnell) June 14, 2018
19-year-old Jaymes Todd handed himself in to police following Eurydice's murder, and later pleaded guilty to the crime.
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