The mother of a teenager who was fatally stabbed in the heart has spoken out about her heartbreaking memories of his final weeks, as well as her determination to change bail laws.
Bailey Jones was just 18-years-old when he died during a house party on the NSW South Coast on December 9, 2022.
Jones had been play fighting with his cousin Dominic Saliba, then 20, who then allegedly grabbed a knife and stabbed him.
Saliba was found not guilty of murder but guilty of the lesser sentence of manslaughter in a judge-alone trial in March 2025.
He was later sentenced to seven years and nine months in jail.
At the time of the stabbing, Saliba was serving an intensive corrections order (ICO) for armed robbery. An ICO is a jail sentence serviced in the community with varying conditions.
Devastated by the loss of her son, Jones’s mother Carol Micallef has revealed the last words he spoke to her along with her fight for better protection for the community.
Heartbroken Mrs Micallef recalled her son saying “I love you”, as he left to hang out with his friends and cousin the night before his death.
Just one month prior, Micallef detailed how her son had spoken of his desire to have a memorable life.
“His words to me only a month before his life was taken at 9.30pm before he went to bed, the words I live by now everyday since his passing I hear it so clearly, those words were: ‘I’m going to be something big one day I’ll be known, it’s huge and I will help so many. I’ll make you proud mum’,” she said.
“ … I never understood how or why he come up with this but it was not like my son to say things like this.
“Those words stuck and when he passed away I swore I would not let him be remembered for the kid who was killed in the way he was.”
Determined to make her son’s wishes a reality, Mrs Micallef is fighting for what she says is an “urgent need” to overhaul how criminals serve sentences in the community, with a petition named Bailey’s Law.
“He’s been gone three-and-a-half years and for three years I’ve been pushing for Bailey’s Law to not only honour him and keep his name alive but to commit to do everything I can to save others by tightening laws,” Mrs Micallef said.
She is pushing for tougher measures for those with a Community Correction Order (ICO) or a community corrections order (CCO), including random in-person checks from police and electronic ankle bracelet tracking. Stricter eligibility for violent and repeat offenders was also needed, as well as random drug and alcohol testing.
Mrs Micallef’s petition reads: “His case (Bailey’s) reveals serious flaws in how ICOs are applied, particularly for violent and repeat offenders.
“Public trust is eroding, and reoffending is rising. ICO must no longer be seen as a ‘soft option’, but as a tool of justice that protects the community.”
On Sunday, Mrs Micallef took to Facebook to declare the petition has attracted over 20,000 signatures.
“We have officially done it, 20,000 signatures in less than four weeks. I cannot get this smile off my face … we all did this, NSW as a whole.
“20,000 signatures gets me to sit parliament so I am absolutely overwhelmed, so grateful.
“We are the voices now for NSW to have these laws tighter and to make our communities a safer place.”