THI DONG TRAN had been cooking dinner but ran out of sugar and went to borrow some from her neighbours. She opened her door to find a woman lying at the bottom of the stairs, covered in blood.
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''I just opened the door and said 'oh my god' … [she was] bleeding everywhere,'' she said.
Canley Vale residents were last night trying to comprehend the stabbing death of a two-year-old girl, during a domestic dispute which left her father and a woman believed to be her mother also in hospital.
Ms Tran said the woman's eyes were opened and looked tired, perhaps from blood loss. ''She just looked at me,'' she said. ''I was so scared.''
Police were called to the unit block in Equity Place at 6.45pm on Saturday, where they discovered a woman, 24, in the stairwell with stab wounds to her chest and shoulder.
Police said the man had barricaded himself inside a unit with his daughter and refused to come out. For more than an hour they attempted to make contact and get inside the unit.
Neighbours gathered on the street as the minutes ticked over.
Police forced entry at about 8pm after going through an adjacent block, according to witnesses. Inside they found the man, and his little girl unconscious, both suffering stab wounds.
One resident, who did not want to be named, was yesterday trying to deflect questions from his four-year-old son, who saw the little girl's ''lifeless'' body as she was brought out from the building. He said two police and a paramedic brought her out running.
''Like, I mean running [with her] in their hands like you would .. if someone was drowning.''
He said domestic violence was a problem in the area, and knew of a stabbing that had occurred in his own nearby unit block recently.
''It's just sad, that's all. As if you'd do that to your own kid,'' he said.
Ms Tran said they seemed like a happy couple, who were friendly and often said hello. She said the father was a happy man.
''They've got the little girl, she's so cute.''
The young girl was rushed to the Children's Hospital at Westmead in a critical condition; however, she died shortly before 10pm. The man, 32, had surgery for a number of stab wounds to his chest and remained under police guard at Liverpool Hospital yesterday afternoon.
The pair were in a stable condition this morning, police said. Investigators have not yet spoken to the man.
Detectives from Cabramatta, the State Crime Command Homicide Squad and South West Metropolitan Region are investigating the incident.
