A dad has recalled his heartbreaking final moments with his baby boy after the youngster was mowed down in a deadly car rampage in Australia.
Little Zachary Matthew-Bryant was sleeping in a pram, beside his sister, when a rampaging driver ploughed into pedestrians in a busy shopping area.
The three-month-old died after being hurled nearly 230 feet from the pram, while his two-year-old sister, Zara, survived with serious injuries.
Five other innocent people were also killed in the murderous attack.
Now, the youngsters’ grieving father, Matthew Bryant, has told a court how he held Zachary as his life support was turned off following the rampage.
"I listened to his heartbeat and held him for the last time trying desperately to hold onto the moment," Matthew told the Victorian Supreme Court.
He added that his boy never even had the chance to celebrate a birthday because of the incident just over two years ago, ABC.net.au reports.
Mum Nawwar Hassan-Bryant, meanwhile, described how she watched "beautiful" Zachary’s "little chest stop moving as he lay in my arms".
She added: "He was still just perfect."
She also described the agonising moment she and Matthew had to leave their young daughter in hospital so they could attend their baby’s funeral.
Zara had to spend a week in hospital following the crash, which saw the siblings’ pram become stuck in the windscreen of the speeding car.
Incredibly, she survived the attack – although she still doesn’t understand that her big brother died at a murderer’s hands, according to news.com.au .
She will sometimes ask her dad: "Do you know Zachary died?"
Today, Matthew and Nawwar stood just metres away from Zachary’s killer, James Gargasoulas, in court as they attended a pre-sentencing hearing.
Gargasoulas, now 29, will be sentenced following the three-day hearing – after being found guilty of murder and reckless conduct by jurors last year.
The driver killed Zachary, a 10-year-old girl and four others after he sped down Bourke Street shopping mall in Melbourne and rammed into bystanders.
A further 27 people were injured in the attack on January 20, 2017.
Police said at the time that the incident was not terror-related and that the driver had a "criminal history" that included domestic violence charges.
He had also been experiencing drug induced delusions.
His victims were Zachary, little Thalia Hakin, Jess Mudie, 22, Bhavita Patel, 33, student Yosuke Kanno, 25, and 33-year-old Matthew Si.
Mr Si’s wife, Melinda Tan, also described her trauma in court, recalling how she was taken to a hospital room to identify a man who had died in theatre.
The court was told her husband had such severe injuries that she had to identify him based on his hands and legs – a sight that hasn’t left her since.
"His body was beyond recognition," Melinda said.
She added that if she could, she would trade places with him.
Prosecutors want Gargasoulas – who was convicted of six counts of murder for the horror rampage – to be locked up for life without parole.
The incident was one of Australia ‘s worst mass killings, since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre on the southern island state of Tasmania.
In the earlier incident, 35 people were gunned down.
The hearing, before Justice Mark Weinberg, continues.
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