Police shot woman eight times as she stabbed her mother to death, inquest told
Tara Cosoleto
A police officer fired eight shots at a woman who refused to put down her knife during a fatal stabbing attack on her mother, a coroner was told.
Carly Pirronelli, 26, was shot dead by police on March 8, 2024, after officers were called to her mother Joanne Perry’s home in Melbourne’s north-eastern suburbs.
A neighbor was alarmed when he heard Perry, 53, shouting for help and saying: “Please don’t kill me, don’t set me on fire.”
Two police officers arrived at the Lower Plenty home at around 6.40pm and found Pirronelli bent over his mother, surrounded by a significant amount of blood.
Police ordered Pirronelli to drop the large knife he used to slit his mother’s neck, but Pirronelli continued the attack, the Victorian Coroner’s Court heard on Monday.
The court heard one of the officers fired eight shots at Pirronelli in 21 seconds.
The young woman collapsed forward and although ambulance medical teams were called, both women died at the scene.
Within the scope of the investigation, which started on Monday, the circumstances of these people’s deaths and Pirronelli’s behavior in the period leading up to the attack are being investigated.
Raph Ajzensztat, a lawyer assisting the coroner, told the court that Pirronelli’s mental health had deteriorated in the months before the attack and that he had multiple interactions with police and the hospital system in 2024.
These included a drug-induced psychosis on Feb. 20, 2024, when Pirronelli had to be restrained by paramedics and taken to the hospital, two days after Perry told the Triple Zero operator that his daughter had tried to strangle him.
Pirronelli was also accused of stealing a Toyota HiLux on March 1 that year and evading police on other occasions. The investigation heard Perry told police on March 7, 2024, that her daughter was acting erratically and wanted to kill herself.
In addition to the police and paramedics who encountered the women before the deadly attack, the police officer who fired the fatal gun and forensic medicine and psychiatry experts will be among the witnesses who will testify during the investigation.
The inquest before coroner Paresa Spanos is expected to last two weeks.
