On Christmas morning, Samantha Schulte attended church "to pray to God she would see her kids again".
While dropping their children off to John Fredrick Schulte the previous day, her estranged husband told her she wouldn't and said "there's nothing you could do about it".
He abused Ms Schulte again when she picked them up on Christmas Day before sending her picture messages of himself with a weapon, prompting her to call triple zero.
After police set up a cordon outside his north Queensland address on December 25, 2018, Mr Schulte sent a video message with the weapon to his estranged wife.
Barely half an hour later officers heard what sounded like a gunshot from the Townsville residence.
Mr Schulte, 37, died barely a month after he had separated from his wife of 10 years.
Following a 2022 inquest, a coroner's report handed down on Monday detailed missed opportunities for police officers to take out a protection order and confiscate Mr Schulte’s registered weapons.
Ms Schulte told the inquest she had endured a long history of domestic violence before she reported her estranged husband to police in November 2018.
She was so fearful for her life she told her mother: "When he kills me, just get my phone because everything is on my phone."
Two days after they separated, Mr Schulte sent her a text message: "I’ll say goodbye. tell the boys not to hate me for what I do"
It prompted her to call police, telling them Mr Schulte had firearms and had previously attempted suicide.
However when they spoke to Mr Schulte he said the message referred to him intending to have sex with other women and he was sorry his kids would be exposed to other females.
When Mr Schulte claimed his marriage had no intimacy in recent years, one officer said he "shouldn’t have to put up with that s***".
The other officer told him: "You're a saint for putting up with it for as long as you had."
Coroner Terry Ryan said the comments may have been an effort to build rapport with Mr Schulte but it may have emboldened his actions.
At the time Mr Schulte volunteered to officers: "My wife said I was going to shoot her and shoot myself."
He also told police he would give his weapons to a friend.
Police recorded it as a "street check", ensuring it was not reviewed by a senior officer as a DV incident.
Weeks later Ms Schulte went home sick from work when her husband arrived without warning and abused her, believing he had caught her having an affair.
She called police after he left, showing officers a text from her husband threatening to shoot her.
No action was taken again when Ms Schulte went to police on Christmas Eve after dropping her kids off.
Mr Ryan described the police response as inappropriate, saying there was sufficient evidence for a protection order to be served after Ms Schulte spoke to police on December 17 and 24.
However he noted it had occurred years before the Women’s Safety Justice Taskforce report and the Commission of Inquiry into Queensland Police responses to domestic and family violence, with 341 recommendations currently being implemented.
"There are not further recommendations which I could reasonably make which have not already been addressed," Mr Ryan said."
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