‘Heard the screaming’: Cobblebank neighbours detail horror alleged double-murder of local kids

WARNING: Distressing content

A heartbroken community has detailed the terrifying moments after a deadly alleged double-stabbing.

A 12-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy were both found with critical knife wounds in Cobblebank, in northwest Melbourne, about 8pm on Saturday.

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The boys had been walking home from a local basketball game, when CCTV shows they were allegedly ambushed by a large group of male offenders wearing masks and armed with machetes, police said.

“It has the hallmarks of a youth gang crime. It is one of the most horrific crimes in a growing and substantive list of crimes of this nature,” Victoria Police Detective Inspector Graham Banks said.

“The children who were (allegedly) murdered were not gang members.”

The youngest victim was the first to be discovered, on Marble Dr, by local mother Clarissa Dunn.

Dunn rushed outside her home after hearing screams — she thought there may have been an accident, but found a seriously injured 12-year-old child laying on the street.

“I saw (them) on (their) own. That’s when I thought, something is not right,” she told 7NEWS.

Dunn described the victim as being “so little”, and struggled to speak about their injuries.

She simply described the attack as “shocking” and “malevolent”.

Paramedics arrived and attempted CPR, but could not save the young boy.

It was not long after Dunn had given her statement to police, that she heard another person on the street say: “There’s another one up the road. His hand is cut off.”

Police and paramedics found 15-year-old Dau Akueng on nearby Cobble St, but could not save his life either.

Dunn said she and her family have reached their limit with the suburb they say is facing increasing levels of crime.

“We’ve lived here six years, but we’re packing up to go.”

Another neighbour, who has lived in Cobblebank for four years, said the attack was captured on her CCTV cameras.

“My daughter heard the screaming,” Jacinta Kaur told 7NEWS.

A short while later, she saw the flashing lights of emergency services.

“We didn’t come out. I saw the police cars. I just checked my camera footage, and I saw everything. It was right outside of my house.”

“Terrible.”

Teen’s father gets frantic call

Dau’s father Elbino Akueng, a security guard, was at work when his son was killed.

“You go to protect people outside, where you work, and then you come home and your loved one is not there,” Akueng told 7NEWS.

He first learned of his son’s death when he picked up a call from his 18-year-old daughter, who told him, “There’s a couple of kids that have been killed in Cobblebank, and my brother is missing.”

Akueng tried to call his son, but the call would not go through. Unable to drive, he jumped straight into an Uber.

But it would be hours before police on the cordoned off street would tell Akueng whether Dau was one of the victims.

“Dau is my only son,” Akueng said.

“He loved basketball, he loved to joke around, to make friends. He was a friendly boy.”

Elbino Akueng was at work when his 15-year-old son Dau was murdered. Credit: 7NEWSFriendly, basketball-loving 15-year-old Dau Akueng (pictured) was murdered alongside a 12-year-old boy in Cobblebank on Saturday. Credit: 7NEWS

Akueng said that their community has already buried several other children this month alone, after similar incidents.

He joined a friend of their family, Aboil Alor, in calling on both law enforcement and the wider community to “do better”.

“We’re here for a better life, not to bury our children,” Alor said.

She was distraught as she recalled Dau’s bright qualities, and said: “He deserved to live a long life.”

Victorian Opposition Leader Brad Battin said the deaths were a tragic outcome of the state’s “crime crisis”.

“Too many Victorians have been victims of crime,” he said in a statement.

“When we talk about the crime crisis, we can never lose sight of its human cost.

“These are not just statistics, they represent lives lost, families shattered, and communities forever changed.”

Federal Labor MP Sam Rae called the murders a “heinous crime”.

“My job is to support the family, support the community and to support the police to bring justice for these kids.”

—With AAP