Friends of a 19-year-old girl found dead in her Sydney eastern suburbs unit are demanding to know what happened to the young mother, who they say was happy and healthy.
The North Bondi apartment block where Yolonda Mumbulla, 19, was found unconscious shortly after 9am on Tuesday is empty, with no flowers or tributes, despite the tragic circumstances surrounding her death.
Detectives searched the apartment and left Wednesday with some remnants of police tape and a boarded up door, the only signs that anything had happened there.
A drug overdose is one of many lines of inquiry police are investigating.
“Yolonda always had an inspiring spirit, she was fun, full of joy and always there to help anyone,” said her friend Alyah Pera.
Yolonda Mumbulla (pictured) was found unconscious in her North Bondi unit on Tuesday morning.
The unit now sits sadly empty of flowers or tributes despite the tragic circumstances surrounding the young mother’s death.
“She was always happy. “You never saw her angry, and if you did, it didn’t last long,” said another friend, Isabella Pike. news.com.au.
“We are so angry… we want answers.”
Mumbulla had recently moved to North Bondi after growing up in Macquarie Fields, in Sydney’s southwest.
She went to Guise Public School, where she had played netball, and then to James Meehan High School with Mrs Pike and Mrs Pera.
“She was always a happy, very cheerful person,” Mrs. Pike said.
Mrs Pera has set up a GoFundMe to raise funds to give Mrs Mumbulla a “proper send-off”.
Mumbulla’s partner, Aaron Carey, 32, claimed to have found her not breathing inside the unit and called paramedics, who pronounced her dead.
Shortly after, police arrested Carey, who was wanted on an unrelated outstanding warrant for larceny.
Teenage mother Yolonda Mumbulla and her partner Aaron Carey in a photo leaked on social networks
Pictured is the unit block on Hardy Street, North Bondi, where Ms Mumbulla’s body was found.
Her devastated father, Derek Mumbler, is completely “torn” by the loss of his youngest daughter.
“She’s my beautiful daughter,” the father of six said. The Daily Telegraph.
‘This shouldn’t happen. Should not.
‘I’m so lost.’
Mumbler recalled how detectives came to his home Tuesday morning to give him the heartbreaking news that Yolonda had died.
“I was very surprised,” he remembers.
‘It’s still hard to process everything right now.
‘I miss my daugther. I miss her.’
Yolonda traveled regularly from North Bondi to visit her father in Macquarie Fields.
She was here last week. She was here a couple of days,’ she said.
‘She was ok. I was glad to see her. We sat and talked.
“We had a beautiful relationship.”
Mumbler said her daughter, who descends from the Yuin and Yaegl tribes, left James Meehan High School in Year 11.
Derek Mumbler (pictured) said he is ‘lost’ without his youngest daughter
Emergency services were called to the unit on Hardy Street in North Bondi, where police discovered the body of Yolonda Mumbulla (pictured), 19, about 9.20am on Tuesday.
WhatsNew2Day Australia previously revealed the troubled couple, who allegedly took drugs together the night before, had a child together last year.
Carey gushed about her new family in a social media post from January 2023.
‘I love you so much baby. Thank you for starting a family with me,’ she wrote.
‘I’m the luckiest guy to have you in my life, Yolonda.
‘You make me the happiest man who ever lived. I love you a lot.’
However, Mumbler claimed that he did not know Carey “from a bar of soap.”
The unit where Mumbulla lived is part of a squalid public housing apartment block in an otherwise affluent suburb.
A neighbor told WhatsNew2Day Australia the unit complex is known for loud disturbances.
“It’s a housing commission block, there are always fights and loud music coming from the units,” he said.
“I used to live in a block of flats, so I know what they’re like, now I live next door, and a lot of junkies live in this block in particular.”
The couple was known to police, with a domestic violence warrant against them, which included standard conditions preventing them from associating.
Aaron Carey (pictured) has been charged with a series of crimes unrelated to his partner’s death.
Following investigations, officers executed a search warrant at an address on nearby Flood Street in Bondi on Tuesday night, where police allegedly seized methylamphetamine and cannabis.
Carey was charged on the outstanding warrant with theft worth less than or equal to $2,000, three counts of entering a vehicle or boat without the consent of the owner/occupant, destroying or damaging property less than or equal to $2,000, hindering or resisting an officer of cop. in the line of duty, and property suspected of being stolen from/on the premises.’
A second man, aged 34, was issued a Country Court Attendance Notice to appear at Waverley Local Court on June 18.
