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Shire Ali killed Sisto Malaspina, the beloved owner of the restaurant, and injured two others after driving his truckload of BBQ bottles into the middle of Melbourne's central business district, before turning on the vehicle and set on fire.
The Meadow Heights garage where Shire Ali lived. Credit:Eddie Jim
In the early hours of Saturday, the federal police raided the Meadow Heights property where Shire Ali was living with his wife.
The owner of the property announced Monday that he had allowed Shire Ali's wife and child to move into the converted garage about six months earlier.
At the time, a family friend, Shire Ali's father-in-law, revealed that his daughter was separated from her husband.
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"We offered to help," said the owner.
"But about two months ago, he moved in.
"We were waiting for her father to come back from Turkey to be able to tell her that she had to leave now that they were together again."
She stated that Shire Ali's stepfather was to return to Australia the same day as the Bourke Street attack.
The woman said that she knew the young mother as a friendly woman who dressed conservatively, but who worried about her husband.
Police confronts Shire Ali after the car explosion and the attack of a knife in Bourke Street on Friday.
"She is such a beautiful girl and has never done anything ordinary," she says
Her father had, however, begun to worry about the way she was dressing.
"He did not like her husband … we also had problems with him."
The woman said Shire Ali woke her elderly mother one night by knocking on the door at 11:30 pm
"He said that he wanted to talk to the man of the house," she said.
"I told him it was me, but he seemed crazy. If only we knew.
Shire Ali lived with his wife and son in a bungalow located at the back of a property at Meadow Heights.Credit:Chris Hopkins
The woman's mother, who lives permanently at Meadow Heights' home, said she was still shocked by Friday's events.
On Monday, shards of glass remained scattered in the aisle after the police raid.
Children's toys, including a green car and a soccer ball, were visible in the living room through a window, while a pressure washer was installed in the concrete yard outside.
Police said that Shire Ali, who arrived in Australia with his parents in the 1980s from Somalia, had radical views and was known to federal counterterrorism agencies.
Police face Shire Ali in Bourke Street on Friday.
His passport was seized in 2015 when he planned to visit Syria.
"He has family associations that we know well," police commissioner Graham Ashton said Friday night.
Shire Ali also had a criminal history of cannabis use, theft and driving, Ashton said.
Acting Deputy National Security Commissioner Ian McCartney said that if Shire Ali did not have direct contact with the Islamic State, authorities believe that he was inspired by the extremist organization.
"It's fair to say that he was inspired.We do not say that it was a direct contact, we were saying it from the point of view of inspiration." said Mr. McCartney.
Fairfax Media revealed on Saturday that Shire Ali also thought he was being pursued by "invisible people with spears" as he became increasingly agitated and delusional in the weeks leading up to his murderous outburst.
On Saturday, his parents' home – a modest brick house on a quiet street in Werribee, in the west of the city – was also raided Saturday morning by police, who had been there for more than 12 hours.
Sources close to his family said that he had a difficult relationship with them and that his life had been "out of control" in recent years, while he was struggling with mental health issues and addiction.
Erin covers the crime for The Age. Most recently, she was a police reporter at Geelong Advertiser.
