It was a moment both powerful and extraordinary: a convicted child killer kneeling in prayer and receiving Holy Communion inside a maximum-security prison in Australia. At his side, almost shoulder to shoulder, stood the father of the children he killed, quietly partaking of the sacrament as well. The two men then recited the Lord’s Prayer together before embracing in the presence of a priest.
The act of grace was captured in a 7NEWS Spotlight program released Aug. 17 on YouTube, already drawing millions of views and sparking widespread conversation about forgiveness and reconciliation. The episode tells the story of Danny Abdallah and his family, who publicly forgave drunk driver Samuel Davidson after he sped down a Sydney road in 2020, killing three of Abdallah’s children and their cousin as they walked for ice cream.
The documentary is titled “Father meets his children’s killer | Extraordinary moment inside maximum-security prison.”
According to Spotlight, Davidson was three times over the legal alcohol limit, drug-affected and out of control when the ute he was driving mounted a footpath and struck seven children in what became known as the Oatlands tragedy.
He was initially jailed for 28 years with no parole in April 2021 but this was reduced to 20 years in Cessnock Correctional Centre near Sydney, a maximum-security prison, with no parole for 15 years. This is for the deaths of Danny and Leila Abdallah’s children Antony (13), Angelina (12), and Sienna (8), who died along with their cousin Veronique Sakr (11). Three other children were also injured in the tragedy.
In the interview, Danny Abdallah was open about his grief and said to Michael Usher, the program’s presenter, that the “pain is real” and “nothing makes me happy anymore” since the tragic event five years ago.
Davidson, who spends 17 hours per day in his cell, was a “very personable young man,” with ADHD, according to a former school teacher quoted on the program, and known to be honest and reliable. But the death of his older sister from Cystic Fibrosis pushed him into depression. His life spiralled into binge drinking and drugs, and following a hedonistic, selfish lifestyle.
“I just hid behind the bottle,” said Davidson on the program. “The drugs, they weren't a massive thing or didn't do them very often. Maybe 15, 20 times in my life I've done drugs, been to maybe six raves. That sort of came a bit later. But the drink, that was my biggest problem. Binge drinking on the weekend.”
On the day of the tragedy on Feb. 1, 2020, Davidson, who had no previous criminal record, started drinking early with his housemates and it got “pretty blurry from there.”
“I'm not even sure why on earth we were driving,” he recalled about getting behind the wheel of his car drunk. “I just know that we ran the red light. I remember waiting to turn, and a traffic light was just taking forever. I don't know why.”
Meanwhile the seven children were walking from the family home to a shop to buy ice cream in Oatlands, in the north west of Sydney. The TV interview poignantly shows them walking happily, captured on CCTV, before the incident.
Davidson admitted he was intoxicated with no control of the car and the CCTV also captures his car accelerating rapidly down the road before hitting the children, by now out of sight, while turning too fast around a kerb corner. In his own words, he took “a corner so fast that not even a race car driver could have pulled that off in a professional car.”
“When I got out, it was horrible. I mean, obviously there were dead bodies. I don't really want to go too far into it, but it was horrible.”
Danny Abdallah went quickly to the scene when he heard what happened and glimpsed Davidson for the first time, being handcuffed and put into a police car. A friend with him pointed out “that’s the guy” and he felt pressured to attack the killer of his children.
Yet Abdallah’s broken heart was with his children, who were dearly loved, and he stayed with their dead bodies as the emergency services dealt with the scene.
“My kids are in front of me, dead or alive, I don't know. And they kept me with them. I didn't think about how I'm going to kill this guy. I'm thinking, how am I going to save my family? The last thing on my mind is trying to chase up a guy and maybe kill him. That's not what went through my head.”
Davidson said on the program that he didn’t know why he did it and he wished the tragedy had never happened. He told presenter Michael Usher that he thought about the children “all the time.”
Yet the program also showed TV footage some days after the accident in 2020, of mother Leila Abdallah publicly and tearfully saying that she forgave Davidson, just days after the tragedy. “If Jesus can forgive, we have to forgive,” she said, at the time. A prison officer told Davidson who broke down in tears.
“That touched me a great deal that she would even think about saying that, let alone it happening,” he recalled to Usher on the program.
It is five years since the incident and Danny Abdallah and Davidson had met privately before but met again in public view for the purposes of the program.
Abdallah said he had “100 percent” forgiven Davidson and saw no point in him continuing in prison. He pointed out that the prison sentence may serve the community’s sense of righteousness but what he wanted was his children back with him, which was impossible. Davidson’s prison sentence did not change that heart-rendering fact.
Abdallah explained that revenge served no purpose: “When I saw my other [surviving] kids, how broken they were… when I saw my wife being broken as well, that for me sort of fizzled away. I don’t want to make that go from bad to worse. It’s like I’ve dug myself a hole and don’t want to go deeper.”
Abdallah checks on Davidson’s elderly parents regularly to ensure their welfare — they are also Christians. He told the program that the tragedy had equally affected them. Davidson has also been welcomed into Abdallah’s family, which has humbled the prisoner.
“When something like what has happened to me has happened, usually people are out for revenge for that, which you can understand, and you can appreciate that because it's such a horrible, tragic event,” acknowledged Davidson. “But regardless, someone's responsible and that person's me.
“You'd think that you're getting out. You're gone. That's it. That's not the case for me. He's given me forgiveness. He's welcomed me into his family. He's gone beyond.”
Davidson said the forgiveness of the Abdallah family had given him hope, and he would be in a “dark place” without it.
“He's impacted my life just as much as my parents have, just as much as my siblings and just as much as my children and my wife,” said Abdallah. “He's in that same circle. And what do I do with that? I can't push him out.”
Davidson, commenting on the fact that Abdallah wanted to meet him again, said he was “blown away” and “very thankful.”
“Look, he's given me everything, to be honest. He's forgiven me. That's massive. I can't really ask for more than that. So anything else is just a bonus. Honestly, I'll look at him like a godfather. I just want to be everything like him, and I’ve got a lot to learn from him.”
Davidson also apologised again on the program for what had happened to the Abdallah family.
“Danny, I'm really sorry to you and your whole family for what I've done and all your friends, and I'm also sorry to all the emergency services that turned up to that day and had to deal with what they dealt with. And I'm sorry to everyone, even the neighbors that were on the scene, everyone that I've affected, I apologize. And I'm deeply sorry and I regret it for the rest of my life.”
“I’ve forgiven you already,” came Abdallah’s measured response.
Abdallah said that when the two men first met he could see “a person that's probably living with the pain of killing four children and giving one child brain damage.”
“Putting my parent hat aside, I could see that he's living in a place of guilt. And I always say, if I had to give him a gun and say, you either shoot those kids or shoot yourself, he'd probably say, I'll shoot myself instead. So what do I do with it? Do I just keep hurting him? It's not going to make anything. Do I keep hating him? What's it going to do? It's not going to do anything.”
The surviving children pray for the killer of their siblings at bedtime prayers, according to Abdallah.
“Every night they get on their knees before they go to bed and offer up a prayer for him.”
Abdallah added that Davidson is “a person I speak with from a spiritual point of view about scripture, about the church."
“He tells me about his day. I speak to him regularly. We speak to each other. Lately, we've been speaking once a week he calls me, and then I sometimes check in on his parents. So the relationship will always be there, I believe.”
Davidson also had a word to say to drivers about keeping to the speed limit on roads.
“So if there's anything I can say to anyone it is obey the speed limit. Obey all the traffic laws. Please do not drink and drive or under the influence of anything before you drive. Do not do it. And yeah, don't, don't drink or take drugs or anything to hide your depression or any anxieties. Just go see a professional if you have to. And some of you might think I'm crazy, but go to church, give it a go. Try it. You never know.”
