'He was my baby': Mother of Aussie killed in LA wildfires remembers son

Sunday, 12 January 2025 09:35

"He said, Mum, you go, I'm staying. Well, there's no way I could leave."

The mother of an Australian man killed in the Los Angeles wildfires has described how she fought hard to save her son from the deadly blaze.

Shelley Sykes' son Rory Callum Sykes, 32, died after the horror wildfires tore through his Malibu home on January 8.

Rory, who was born blind and with cerebral palsy, had remained in a cottage off the main property on their 17-acre Mount Malibu TV Studio estate as Shelley tried in vain to fight the flames.

Shelley Sykes, mother of Rory Sykes, who died in LA wildfire

"Rory's feet with the heat had started to swell, and he couldn't walk very well. And he also had problems with his tummy. So he didn't want to be far away from the bathroom," Shelley told Weekend Today.

"So he said, Mum, you go, I'm staying. Well, there's no way I could leave."

"So I stayed in the main property with my two peacocks in a bathroom because it was hard to breathe. Sitting on the floor with bottled water and trying to keep wet."

Shelley said she kept an eye on her son's cottage and saw embers flickering on the roof early one morning a few days ago.

But her attempts to put out the burgeoning flames were thwarted as no water came out of their hose.

"I had to race back to the house, try and open the massive garage door that had no power, lift it, get the car out and drive half a mile to the fire station," Shelley recalled.

British-born Rory Callum Sykes moved to Australia as a child and had been living in the United States.

"They said, 'what are you doing? You're not supposed to be here'. And I said, 'please help Rory. His cottage has got flames on it and I've got no water'.

"They said, 'Shelley, we've got no water either'."

When Shelley and the fire crews returned to try and save Rory, it was too late.

There was "nothing we could do", she said tearfully.

Her son had perished in the flames.

"When I got there, the three cottages were down to the ground and just black ash," she said.

"My house was fine, the big main house, but there were embers flying everywhere and it was hard to breathe."

A beach house is engulfed in flames as the Palisades Fire burns along Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, California on January 8.

Shelley said her son Rory was a "very courageous man" who had overcome huge adversity in his life.

"They said he'd never see or walk, and he defied all the odds," she said.

"He loved Australia. He grew up as an Aussie boy, and has the Aussie accent…. He was my baby."

British-born Rory moved to Australia as a child and attended school in Sydney but has been living in the US more recently.

Rory's mum, Shelley Sykes, said she is "totally heart broken" when announcing the news of her loss.

"A wonderful son, a gift born on mine & his grandmas birthday... a true humanitarian," she wrote in part of a lengthy tribute on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

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