Wife of alleged killer breaks her silence about new mum's death | Daily Mail

Toowoomba in southeast Queensland is probably one of the most quintessential Australian cities.With a population of 142 ,000 and a close proximity to Brisbane, it's Australia's second largest inland city after the national capital, Canberra.Despite its size, it has the distinct vibe of a big country town where everyone seems to know everyone.So when Yana Armstrong, a 30 -year -old brand new mum and a much -loved support carer within the community, went missing earlier this month and was later found dead in bushland, the city of Toowoomba was understandably reeling.I am Carly Smith, senior reporter at the Daily Mail.I have been covering this harrowing story that has sent shockwaves around the nation.

This horrible situation began on Tuesday, July the 7th, which started out as a fairly normal day for Yana.She strapped her four -month -old son, Dachel, into her white Hyundai Kona SUV, and then she drove to meet her sister, Faith Isaacs, for brunch at a cafe in Toowoomba.The two sisters were incredibly close and brought even closer due to the very sad deaths of their parents in quite close proximity to each other.a few years ago.That brunch is the last time that Faith would see her sister Yana alive.So Faith told the ABC that looking back after she shared brunch with Yana, she kind of felt that in hindsight maybe there wasn't something quite right with her sister.

In the early hours of the following morning, Wednesday July 8, Yana's Hyundai Kona was found abandoned, unlocked and parked strangely near her home on Gordon Avenue in the suburb of Newtown.So police on that Wednesday very quickly began searching.a report about a missing person.A search was very quickly launched, but already Yana's loved ones could tell that something was very, very wrong.As a crime reporter, you kind of see this happen a little bit too often, as is the case with a lot of missing persons reports that kind of hit the internet.You often see people not known to the missing person or their family start to speculate and kind of play armchair detective and speculate what might have happened to that person.

So with Jana, given that she'd only recently given birth, as I've mentioned, her son was only four months old.There was a lot of absolutely baseless speculation on the internet that perhaps Jana might have been suffering from postnatal depression and perhaps had come to harm herself.I spoke to several of Jana's friends in the days after she was reported missing and they were absolutely outraged at the suggestion that Jana may have harmed herself while suffering some kind of mental health issue.One of those friends who I spoke to, she was absolutely devastated and she broke down in tears while we were talking on the phone.particularly about the very thought that Jana may have done something to hurt herself, which would have then meant that she would have abandoned her baby son.This friend said she was very much not suffering from any kind of mental health issue, and in fact had been deliriously happy since welcoming Dashil into her life.

She always wanted to become a mum and that dream had only just come true.and this friend also said to me that if Jana was depressedwhich to be clear, again, she wasn't, there is another very important reason that she would never have done anything to harm her own safety, particularly because she never would have wanted to abandon her dear sister, Faith.Faith was actually going through another tragedy that is also just as unthinkable as losing her sister, which we'll go into later.As police and along with the local SES and Yana's family and friends were desperately searching for Yana in and around Toowoomba, new details started to come to light about her former partner, Dharminder Singh.Now, Dharminder is the father of her four months old son.

The 48 -year -old was stopped outside of the Toowoomba Magistrates Court on the Friday following Yana's disappearance.Now, he was appearing there on an unrelated matter.As he exited the court, a Channel 7 news team, a reporter and a cameraman, caught up with him and asked if he knew where Yana was.And he responded very quickly that he had no idea.Do you know where she is, Yana?I have no idea.

Something that stood out to me while watching that video was Darminder's dishevelled appearance and going by the footage you could sort of see as well that he appeared to have some kind of marks on his face.I'm not sure what those were but they just were quite striking to me at the time.At this stage he was not a suspect in Jana's disappearance or at least not publicly known, like the police hadn't spoken, the police hadn't told the media that they were looking at him.So that's the first time that Dharmendra Singh enters the narrative here surrounding Jana as people are continuing to look for her.Early on Sunday morning, the Sunday after Jana had been last seen on Tuesday the 7th of July, Jana's sister Faith received the absolutely worst news imaginable.Police had told her that her sister was dead and the circumstances surrounding her death were just unthinkably horrific.

So according to police, a group of pig hunters had happened across some human remains on the Saturday evening.Those remains are at the bottom of a steep embankment in bushland off the winding rural Eskampton Road, which is just a bit north of Toowoomba.Police believe the remains to have been Yana's and obviously set out to tell Yana's family, including Faith, as soon as they were basically certain that that was their missing loved one.Police have alleged that Yana was strangled to death before her killer took her to that remote bushland area and threw her body over that embankment.At 6 .30am on Sunday, the morning after Jana's remains were found, Faith shared a really emotional post on Facebook confirming the news.So this case by this point had taken on so much interest nationally and Faith was just doing her best to get the word out because you know, you've got someone missing and everyone, like the more that people know about it, the more people are looking for her.

So Faith did an amazing job keeping the communication up with the public via her Facebook posts, which were set to public so that everyone could see them.Everyone who was interested could look Faith up and get the updates straight from her.It is with a completely broken heartthat I share we have now been advised my beautiful sister Yana has been found deceased.Police have made an arrest and a man has now been charged with my sister's murder.There are simply no words to describe the heartbreak and devastation I am feeling.

Losing my beautiful sister in this way is something I will never be able to understand or put into words.My beautiful Yana deserved so much more.She was so deeply loved and will be missed beyond words.Faith then shared a really powerful pledge.I promise you, Yana, your beautiful baby boy will always know exactly who his mummy was, how deeply you loved him and just how incredibly special you were.I will speak your name, share your stories and keep your memory alive for him every single day.

I will never, ever let him forget his beautiful mummy.Just hours after Jana's body was found discarded in the bush, police swooped on her former partner, the Indian -born maxi -taxi driver, Dharminder Singh.They arrested him in an apartment in Harristown around dawn or before dawn and charged him with domestic violence murder.Singh appeared via audio -visual link at the Toowoomba Magistrates Court that following Monday.He was remanded in custody and will face court again in October.He was dressed in prison greens and appeared slumped over during the court proceedings.

Yana's family, including Faith, who was poignantly clutching Yana's son, Dishal, they were present in the courtroom and watched it all play out.Singh did not enter a plea and his lawyer, Ramli Salikhan, has indicated he will fight the charge.He described hisclient to reporters after he appeared in court.He described Singh as being distressed.He said that his client has cooperated with the police investigation.

His client asserts his innocence and that this matter will be defended.So as I was talking to locals in Toowoomba, I ended up getting to know a fellow who is wheelchair bound and was once a frequent user of Sing's Maxi Taxi service.His last ride with Sing was probably around six months ago, and this man said that he had heard Sing was banned from driving as a representative of black and white cabs, which I understand he was a contract worker for, because there were claims that Sing had behaved inappropriately with a female passenger or female passengers.I spoke to the manager of Black and White Cabs, which is based in Brisbane but does have an arm in Toowoomba, and he didn't want to comment too extensively, but he did confirm that Singh is an associate of the taxi industry in the area and that he has not driven for Black and White Cabs for six months.He didn't comment on the claims that I put to him about whether or not Singh had behaved inappropriately with a female passenger or female passengers.So going back to this man that I spoke to who didn't want to be named, but he told me that not only did he know Singh, but he's known Jana for many, many years.

He is He told me that Singh was kind of the go -to guy in town for wheelchair -bound people due to the size of his taxi.And a lot of wheelchair -bound people have support care workers, which Jana was one of those people.And this man told me thatme that she actually met Singh when she was transporting a person who was in the rear of the taxi and she was in the front seat next to Singh and that's how they met.A second source that I spoke to that also uses the taxi services in Toowoomba actually backed up this story as well.She also knew Singh and she also knew Yana.

But going back to the man that I was speaking to, again, he's an unnamed source, he told me that he'd only just spoken to Yana not too long ago.They'd run into each other at the local shopping mall.She actually mentioned Singh and her relationship with him and he was questioning how it was going with him.And she described him as being really lovely to her.But then he dropped probably something that absolutely stunned me, which is a lot because in this job you hear a lot and it takes a lot to render you speechless.This man told me in the middle of our conversation that Singh was actually still married to his estranged wife, who also lived in the town.

And this is despite the fact that he had only recently fathered a child with Jana.A few days ago, I managed to track down Singh's wife, who lives in the Toowoomba area.And she's married to Singh.She has two children with him.And she confirmed all this to me.She was, as you would expect, absolutely broken by the series of events that had just occurred in relation to Jana's death and her husband being charged with Jana's domestic violence murder.

I wasn't even sure if I believed this myself until I called her and I asked her if she was married to Dharminder Singh and she confirmed that she was and then I said thatsame Dharmendra Singh who faced court on Monday accused of the domestic violence murder of 30 year old Jana Armstrong and she confirmed yes indeed she was.This woman was quite tearful as understandably so but at first at least she did seem to want to talk about what was going on.She told me that her husband had started seeing Jana around three years ago and ultimately left the family home that he shared with his wife and two children.and moved in with Jana.This wife said that before Singh moved in with Jana, leaving her and her family, she was very, very happy with her life.

He appeared for all the world to be a doting father to her children and I've seen photos of them all at family events and looking very happy and very involved in the local Indian community.But Singh's wife did say that, you know, the second that he started to show interest in Jana, that happiness, that family happiness that she had was clearly absolutely shattered.And she told me that when this all started to happen, that absolutely everything changed for her and her life as she knew it.I also just want to note here, this is really important, that we have agreed not to name Singh's wife or identify her or her children.She was, when I spoke to her, she was at first happy to talk, as I mentioned, but then she started to worry that in exposing her identity and her children's identity that they may become a target in Toowoomba just because of her association with Singh.This clearly broken woman said to me that she was terribly sad about the fact that Jana has died and she confessed that she is

unable to sleep at night.Now, as Singh awaits his next court date, all the focus is on the baby boy left behind amid these terrible, terrible series of events.So this little boy is in the care of his auntie Faith and his uncle Michael, Faith's husband, and a couple of Yana's cousins have launched a GoFundMe to help Faith and Michael raise this little boy unexpectedly and obviously then as well help cover the funeral costs for a family member that should have lived a long and happy life.I want to go back to talking about Faith a little bit here because her story is absolutely incredible.She has been a tower of strength for the Armstrong family.She's been managing all of this media attention, which I understand has been quite relentless.

I had a brief conversation with Faith in How has Bubby settled in?

Yeah, he's all right.I can sort of tell that he was such a big mummy's boy.Everyone that knew Yana and baby Dachelle knew that when someone else was holding him, he would look for her.He was always looking for her.And so he just doesn't have that anymore, but I can tell that He just, yeah, he just misses his mum.

Is he still looking for her?

Yeah.Yana and I sound quite similar as well.And when Michael's holding, holding him and I'm talking, sometimes he'll like turn really quickly to see if it's Yana, but it's, it's just auntie.

And she's doing all this while also helping, you know, she's taking care of her, her nephew, whose mother has died and whose father is now in jail.and you know this little boy was also, Yana was still breastfeeding when she died so any viewer who's a mother would understand that you know Faith is now also trying to to raise this infant and get him used to bottle feeding.So this is all going on while the cameras are on them.They've been making public pleas to help find Jana before they actually did ultimately find her.So it's a lot going on for Faith.And making this all the more incredible and poignant is the fact that Faith herself only recently suffered an absolutely unthinkable tragedy herself.

So the Isaacs have a young son already, but they also very recently welcomed a baby daughter, who they named Lahara.There were complications during the birth and Lahara did not survive much longer than a few weeks, which is just absolutely unfathomable.When Faith went to Toowoomba Magistrate's court on Monday, when Singh was facing court, You will have seen the footage of her carrying the baby on her chest.Reporters asked her how she was holding up, essentially, and her response was that she was just surviving on so much adrenaline as she cares for her nephew and chases justice for her beloved sister.As I understand it, Yana and Faith and their brothers only fairly recently also lost both of their parents.First, their mum Robin, a family friend, told me that she suffered from multiple sclerosis.

She was wheelchair -bound and in June 2019 she passed away.Then their father Ronald died.in February 2021.Yana's death is yet another reminder that Australia is in the grips of an epidemic of violence against women.In 2026, 37 women have died as a result of alleged partner or former partner violence.That's just this year.

Queensland Premier David Christopher Lee, his Liberal state government is copying serious scrutiny at the moment for cutting $40 million for funding in domestic violence prevention, despite these sickening statistics.That's something that Queensland Labor MP Shannon Fentiman says is indefensible.

It is absolutely shocking that we continue to see violence against women.at this level, at these rates.And at the time that we have seen four DV incidents play out here in Queensland in recent weeks, we have a government that is cutting $40 million from domestic and family violence prevention.

After Jana died, Premier Christopher Lee made a statement where he agreed that something must be done.

We must do more as a state.

Now there's another human face to this national disgrace, and that is Faith Isaacs, the sister of Jana, who did not mince her words when she spoke about the scourge that is domestic violence in this country, which has allegedly robbed her of a sister and robbed a little baby of a mother.She said,more needs to be done.The government, they need to do more.It's just ridiculous, she said.