This is pure speculation but finding out that his mother was an English questions really rung some alarm bells with me. For a few reasons. When his name was first leaked to the media, I went straight to Facebook and found his profile, however it was set to private as there was nothing on there except saying he was in a complicated relationship. However, with the new facebook search of being able to search for "photos of whomever" "Photos commented on by whomever", I was able to trace back to a few family members, one of which was his cousin, aunty and sister. His profile has now been taken down, as has his sisters. She had a photo of herself, her mother and him as her profile photo, which had been added in August this year.
But what has got alarm bells ringing is the following, his mother, sister, cousin and aunty, all had links to Asians, be it having exchange students or teaching. His aunty and cousin live in Hong Kong, and his aunty is also a teacher of English. His sister had people writing on her wall that were Asian and obviously had English as their second language due to how they were writing, one of which said that they miss her and Brisbane. Which made me wonder if they had exchange students at some point. The apartment he lives in also has a large number of Asians living there. Now that I see that his mother (whom matches the photo I saw on Facebook and now her Linkedin page) is an English teacher with a Masters in TESOL, it got me thinking again.
When I initally saw the high rate of Asian links to the family on Facebook, I wondered if he had it in for Asians, that maybe he had been rejected by an exchange student at some point and took his anger out on her.
I feel that he didn't leave the house intending to kill someone, but that he had been out that night and was heading home. Nightclubs in Brisbane have a lock out at 3am, and it isn't unusual for people his age to be out until daybreak, which makes me think he was walking home, maybe on the opposite side of the street that Eunji was walking down,as that is the street he would most likely walk to get to home. He may have had alcohol or other substances in his system at that stage, which may heighten his anger and then he saw Eunji walking alone and something snapped and he saw his chance for his long obsession for killing. Or maybe he didn't even intend to kill her, that he tried to hit on her but was rejected and then he snapped? I know that when walking through the Brisbane CBD on a Saturday night/early Sunday morning and you are female, there are always late night clubbers making their way home and try to chat to you because they are drunk, most of them are harmless but I have known others to get abusive if you tell them to leave you alone.
I know at the moment the Brisbane police and government are trying to assure everyone that this wasn't a race related incident, but the links to Asians in this case just makes me wonder if deep down it was some hatred he held towards them. Be it that he was rejected by one in the past, or that his mothers work teaching English took her away from spending time with him and he became resentful towards a certain race of people. Just makes me wonder.