‘He’s trying to kill me’: It took cops 20 hours to enter woman’s home and find her dead after harrowing triple-0 call
It took almost a day for the police to enter the house of the woman who called Triple-0 and said her ex-boyfriend was “trying to kill me.”
“My ex-boyfriend is here and he’s trying to kill me… He’s beating me,” she told the police.
But Tatiana Dokhotaru’s desperate plea for help was suddenly interrupted when her killer Danny Zayat threw her phone from the balcony of her 22nd-floor apartment; This was one of his final acts of cruelty against the 34-year-old after years of violent abuse.
The call was terminated before I could tell the operator my apartment number.
Just three minutes later, Zayat was seen on security cameras stealing his savings and fleeing his building.
Police teams arrived at the scene three hours after the report, but left the scene when they could not find the location of the search in the apartment.
Sentencing Zayat, Judge Desmond Fagan said: “They left without reaching any part of the building or obtaining further information about the location or circumstances of the person making the search.”
By morning Tatiana was dead; He was killed at the hands of the man he warned was trying to kill him.
He died after suffering a brain hemorrhage as a result of a blunt force blow to his head.
Police returned to his home shortly before 7pm the following evening but were unable to contact him by phone or by calling his flat on the ground floor intercom.
About 20 hours later, they finally entered the apartment after the killer returned to the apartment and found him dead on the couch.
Chilling body-worn police footage shows Zayat, who prosecutors say had crocodile tears, crying hysterically after police arrived at his apartment.
Danny Zayat was caught on police body-worn footage after his partner Tatiana Dokhotaru’s body was found in his Liverpool unit.
The Supreme Court found after Zayat’s trial that an exact time of death could not be determined, but that he died sometime between the end of the triple search and the early hours of the next morning.
NewsWire does not suggest that Ms Dokhotaru could have been saved if the police had arrived sooner. NSW Police declined to comment due to an ongoing critical incident investigation.
Zayat was sentenced on Friday to a minimum of 18 years in prison for the murder of Ms. Dokhotaru on May 26, 2023; Judge Desmond Fagan detailed the disturbing “cycle of control and manipulation”, violent jealousy and the trail of abuse Zayat took in the lead up to killing Ms Dokhotaru.
‘I will kill you’
Ms Dokhotaru and Zayat were together for five years from 2017 until she broke up with him in November 2022.
Judge Fagan found that Zayat began attacking her from May 2021, punching and pushing her to the ground in front of her friend.
She obtained an interim arrest warrant (ADVO) against him in April 2022 to prevent him from stalking, harassing, intimidating, assaulting or threatening her.
However, Zayat exploded when he was served, urging her to say: “I’m going to kill you”.
The patient’s abusive verbal and physical abuse continued.
By 2023, Judge Fagan concluded that Ms Dokhotaru feared Zayat might react violently if she sought further assistance from the police.
Killer’s ‘jealous anger’Zayat was “freaked out” when he learned that Ms Dokhotaru was seeing someone else in late 2022 or early 2023, strangled her and confronted the man.
Months after their breakup, in April 2023, he flew into a jealous rage again after going through her phone while in the shower.
She later texted her friend, saying Zayat dragged her by her hair, spat on her, and threatened to kill her if she called the police after finding messages between him and other men on her phone.
“It was absolute hell with my body in shock,” Ms Dokhotaru said in the messages.
“He was spitting in my face… calling me a dirty slut and couldn’t wait until he killed me.”
Later that day, she texted Zayat to say “nothing will ever be the same again,” but Zayat responded by saying “the one that was created for us, I can’t love anyone else the way I love you.”
Zayat said, “I will give way, just promise me that you will be loyal to me.”
On April 30, 2023, he attacked her again for talking to a man, and Ms Dokhotaru sent Zayat a photo of the red marks he left on her neck after strangling her.
“Photos I can’t see anything,” he replied, before deleting messages about the drowning and later denying he had done it.
Days later, he told her how much he loved her and that “if something happened to her, she wouldn’t be able to live on her own.”
‘I almost choked because I called someone baby’
The pair spent the night together after going out to celebrate Ms Dokhotaru’s birthday on May 6, 2023, but things took a drastic turn two days later when Ms Dokhotaru discovered Zayat had been messaging one of his female clients and “apparently wanted intimacy with her”.
“I truly forgave you for how stupid you were yesterday,” she texted.
“I almost choked on calling someone baby, but look at this.”
She added: “What killed me was the way you talked to her and smothered me baby.”
He responded with words stating that he could not trust her but wanted to “start over”.
“I’m so depressed about what I did to you and I’m tired of stressing over whether we’re going to work or you’re going to go somewhere else,” he wrote.
He called for ‘Seek help’.
“Danny you need to get help… before it’s too late… you need to do it,” he wrote.
He died less than two weeks later.
Zayat said he was receiving counseling at the time, but Judge Desmond Fagan found no evidence of this.
Killer tried to convince cops to die from overdose
About a week after Ms. Dokhotaru begged Zayat to get help, Zayat attacked her so violently that she thought her ribs were broken.
Afterwards, he repeatedly told her to “get up” and noted that she was lying on the floor “inadequate and distressed.”
Judge Fagan described the video as “a picture of cowardice and cruelty”.
Judge Fagan said: “The few words Tatiana could say as she lay helpless on the ground were despair, defeat and suicide.”
He also took photos of some anxiety and allergy medications that he was “very keen” to tell police after the murder “perhaps to convince them…that (the woman) probably died of an overdose.” This was ignored in the autopsy examination and toxicology report.
At this stage, Ms Dokhotaru, humiliated by Zayat’s control over her, lied to her friends and family about how she had been injured, while Zayat told his colleagues that he had fallen down the stairs.
When Zayat took on the role of caregiver, he stayed at home for three days to recover, staying with her in what Judge Fagan ruled was a scare tactic to warn her not to tell anyone the truth about her injuries or to contact other men.
“He actually kept watch over her until the following Friday night when he killed her,” Judge Fagan said.
On May 26, as Zayat killed Ms. Dokhotaru, neighbors heard loud knocks, shouts and “very suggestive abuse in a guttural tone” coming from Ms. Dokhotaru’s apartment.
He will be eligible for parole in 2043 after serving at least 18 years in prison.
