The last time Paul Antaw's family saw him he was on his way to the Sydney CBD to stay with friends. He was healthy and happy, and determined to find a job and his own place to live.
Two days after he left, detectives knocked on Jane Antaw's door and delivered the news that her 38-year-old brother had been fatally stabbed.
"He was too young to be taken," Ms Antaw told The Sydney Morning Herald.
"He was a kind hearted man. A family man. He was a larrikin who would always see the fun side of things."
Mr Antaw, or "Paulie" as he was known to his friends and family, was stabbed to death in the inner Sydney suburb of Woolloomooloo last Monday morning.
Emergency services were called to Talbot Lane - where the refuge accommodation Matthew Talbot Hostel is located - about 9am.
Matthew John Whitehall, 40, who was living at the hostel, was arrested at a shopping mall in nearby Potts Point 2½ hours later and charged with murder.
Mr Antaw's grieving family said they were tortured by questions about what had unfolded on the morning of his death.
Mr Antaw, they said, was living between his mother's and sister's homes in western Sydney and was not staying at the hostel. They do not believe Mr Antaw and Mr Whitehall were friends.
"The police come knocking at my door. The detectives came and told us. The rest is a blur really. I'm still expecting him to pop up," Ms Antaw said.
"He was going to city to go and see someone ... I don't know what happened. I don't have answers."
Ms Antaw said she wanted her older brother to be remembered as a generous, independent and smart man.
He had become mixed up "with the wrong people", she said, but in recent months had been determined to turn his life around.
"He was finally starting to fix himself up. To get back on the straight and narrow and get a job. He was looking at getting his own place so he could be stable," Ms Antaw said.
"He was in a good state, he was healthy."
Ms Antaw said her brother, who was 193 centimetres tall, had been a talented athlete as a young man and was idolised by his nieces and nephews.
The man accused of killing Mr Antaw did not appear via audio visual link when his case was mentioned in Central Local Court last week.
Court documents showed that, at the time of the stabbing, Mr Whitehall was on bail for an alleged assault committed earlier this month. His address was listed as the hostel.
He remains in custody and is next due to appear in court in March.