The father of slain schoolgirl Adele Smith has spoken of his grief 20 years after his daughter was shot dead in her hospital bed at Goulburn.
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In late-May 1998, Adele was in Goulburn Base Hospital recovering from a minor back injury after a horse-riding accident.
About 2pm on Friday, May 29, her ex-boyfriend Paull Francis McLaughlin walked through the main entrance of the hospital.
It was a few days after she had ended their 11-month relationship.
He took the elevator to the first floor, drew the curtains around Adele’s bed and pulled out the sawn-off .22-calibre rifle concealed within his overcoat.
Five shots hit the wall and one struck her face, near the eye.
Attempts by staff to revive Adele were unsuccessful and she died a short time after from the gunshot wound.
This week, her father Alan Smith said it “only feels like yesterday” that Adele was here and that her loss was something he felt every day.
“You don’t get used to it but you have to put up with it. Life goes on,” Mr Smith said.
“It has been 20 years now. That time seems to have flown by … sometimes it still seems like yesterday that she was here and there are other times when it seems like a million years away.
“I miss her every day. We all do. I am still in contact with a lot of her friends and they all miss her too.
“It is comforting to know she is still missed and still remembered every day.”
He said Adele was a talented horse rider.
“She was an exceptionally good horse rider. She won a lot of prizes at big shows,” Mr Smith said.
“This is why we like to keep her memory alive with the two trophies that are named in her honour - for the Rodeo Rideathon and for the Goulburn Show. The Rodeo Club and the Goulburn Show Society have been very good about it over the years.”
Mr Smith and his mother Gloria were on hand on Saturday, May 26 at a function at the Workers Club to mark the 50th anniversary rodeo, held in February. On the night they presented the 2018 Adele Smith Memorial trophy to Shana McLean.
Mr Smith said he still had Adele’s horse.
“I still have her horse, a pinto mare named Maud. She is 36 years old now, which is very old for a horse and that is the same age that Adele would have been this year,” he said.
“The mare, Maud is going very well for her age. She is a paint mare, which is a breed that the American Indians used to ride.
There was a massive outpouring of grief in the city at the time of the shooting, with more than 2000 people attending Adele’s funeral in St Saviour’s Cathedral.
A talented equestrian, Adele rode Maud in competitions.
They were inseparable.
Spruced up and braided, Maud stood outside the church, saddled but riderless, before leading the line of funeral cars to the local cemetery.
The funeral was the biggest Goulburn had seen. Flags were at half-mast and some shops closed for the service.
Relatives and friends embraced in emotional scenes as schoomates carried her coffin from the church.
The tragedy prompted calls for tighter security at the hospital and other health facilities across the state.
In December of the following year, a jury found 22-year-old McLaughlin not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.
Supreme Court judge Jeremy Badgery-Parker said he accepted McLaughlin planned to shoot himself but accidentally killed Adele instead after she broke off their relationship.
He said the actual discharge of the weapon did not occur through any voluntary action on McLaughlin's part.
"Nevertheless there can be no doubt that the whole of his obviously voluntary conduct in taking the weapon into the hospital, loaded and cocked, and manipulating the weapon in his attempts to cause it to discharge in pursuit of his intention to take his own life was unlawful and constituted a dangerous act in the sense that it exposed Adele Smith to a significant risk of serious injury," Justice Badgery-Parker said during sentencing in February 2000.
McLaughlin was given 7 ½ years’ jail with a non-parole period of 4 ½ years.
The verdict was greeted with dismay, tears and anger by family and friends of the dead Goulburn teenager.
Adele's grandmother said at the time McLaughlin would be out of jail in two years but Adele would never come home.
"They didn't mention Adele, what sort of life she led, what a good girl she was," she said.
"All she did was try to break off with him and because of that she was [killed]."
Additional reporting by David Cole, Goulburn Post
