John Makita

The phone call really threw me.

I remember I was actually at train station on the north coast of New South Wales and my colleagues who were with me were sort of like, are you okay?

Because I sort of lost the feeling in my legs and I was squatting on the ground.

It was just...

Utter amazement that after so long and fighting so hard that we were actually going to have somebody now be responsible for what had happened to my grandparents.

Well, in the first few days, unfortunately, I was unable to be inside the courtroom because I was going to be called as a witness.

And so I missed out on the opening statements and a few other things, which I wasn't overly happy about.

My parents couldn't come into the courtroom because...

It was just too hard on them.

For my mum, it has made her unwell.

It has affected her health quite considerably where she can't eat a lot of the time when we have different things that come up during the trial.

And so they had to be removed outside of that.

We were very fortunate that they were given a victim liaison officer from ACT Policing who could basically hold their hand and walk with them at home and tell them things that they needed to hear.

But there were some instances where there were things that were shown or talked about which were quite distressing for all of us in the family.

I was adamant to stay in the courtroom even when they were showing photos and videos.

The DPP or the Crown were quite respectful for the family and made sure that the screens were not able to be seen from the gallery easily.

So my wife would be there and say, oh, you can look up now or you can look down just so that you don't see certain things.

It did get to the stage towards the end where I felt as though I needed to see some stuff.

And I did look up and see some images of my grandmother laying in the hallway and some of the brutality that was shown to her and her body and the blood and things like that.

I think the thing that hurt us the most and was...