Luke Batty's mum not told of death threats

The mother of murdered Victorian school boy Luke Batty says police should have told her her former partner made unrelated death threats before the killing.

Mourners congregate at an evening vigil for Luke Batty

Hundreds turned out to a celebrity cricket match to honour Luke Batty, who was killed by his father. (AAP)

The mother of murdered school boy Luke Batty says police didn't tell her about frightening death threats made by his father just weeks before he killed their son.

Greg Anderson murdered his 11-year-old son on February 12 at a cricket pitch in the Victorian town of Tyabb. Anderson was shot by police at the scene and later died.

A few weeks before Luke's tragic death, Anderson threatened to kill one of his house mates - asking him if he wanted to die, before suggesting he would cut his head off.

The house mate was granted an intervention order and police arrested Anderson.

They contacted Luke's mother Rosie Batty about a week before Luke was murdered and asked her if she knew where Anderson was living. However, she says, they failed to tell her about the death threat or a separate intervention order against him.

"It's gravely concerning," she told ABC program Four Corners.

"You can't help but think that some intervention may have just been enough for him to rethink or maybe enough of a red flag for me to understand what acute danger Luke and I were in."

By now Anderson was only allowed to see Luke in public when he was playing sport after Ms Batty was informed he had been caught viewing child pornography images.

"For some reasons I thought he was safer in an open space with people around," Ms Batty said.

She recalled Anderson turned up with a "big smile" at his son's cricket practice, but soon after she heard a "very disturbing sound".

"I ran towards the sound because I didn't understand what it was and I could see Greg kneeling beside Luke and I thought, oh my God, he's done a fast bowl to his head and he's knocked him out and he's really hurt him," she said.

Cricket coach Cameron Colvin was there that night and spoke to Anderson after the horrific attack.

"I asked Greg, how's he doing? And that's when he said, `yeah, he's okay, he's fine, he's in heaven now'."

Victoria Police Commissioner Ken Lay said stringent privacy laws limited the amount of information available to potential victims.

"From a victim's perspective, I suspect you'd be very angry if you weren't privy to that sort of information," he said.

However, he said the pending coroner's inquest into Luke's death limited what he could say about his feelings on the issue.

"I hope to be in a position, once the coroner comes back, to be making some public comments about these issues which might better reflect my views on things."


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