Kiwi parents’ nightmare ‘OUR SON SHOULD STILL BE HERE’
There’s a photo of a beautiful boy with a huge smile on the wall of Tash Dalley’s kitchen in Mount Maunganui. It’s her son Blake, aged 13, posing on a balcony overlooking the sea in a smart navy shirt he’d just bought with his mum.
The photo was taken on December 10, 2020, the night of the school dance for children leaving Mount Maunganui Intermediate School for the long summer break.
Blake never got to see that summer. He never started high school. He never got to dance again. Less than a week after that photo was taken, Blake was lying in an open casket in the family’s living room, dressed in that same shirt.
His distraught parents Tash, 41, and Seaton, 50, slept at his side. His siblings circled their brother, talking to him and drawing pictures to put in “his bed”.
The Dalleys are a large, loving family. Blake was the middle
