STEPHEN Lock was a controlling and abusive husband who turned to drugs to try to level his volatile moods.

His wife Karina was a devout Jehovah’s Witness who stayed with him for her religion until she could take it no more.

Friends of the couple last night revealed details of their tumultuous relationship, which ended tragically in a hail of gun fire in the middle of a McDonald’s restaurant yesterday.

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Karina had left her husband before, only to end up back with him when he pursued her.

But this time it was for good, and she was finally starting afresh with a new life on the Gold Coast without the man who had for years tormented her.

They had sold their house in Puller St at Maryborough, where they had lived together for 16 years, in February last year.

media_camera Steve Lock.

By then they had already been separated but had been living together. When the sold sign went up, it signalled the end for their marriage, to the relief of worried friends.

“He would take marijuana all the time to make him feel more normal. It made him worse, it made him violent,” one friend recalled.

“That was one of their arguments because she kept telling him to get off it. He used to yell. He was not nice. That went on for years and years.

“He believed that the law was there to be broken and he did his very best to do that.”

media_camera Police at the scene at Helensvale McDonalds yesterday. Photo Mike Batterham

The couple had four children — two boys and two girls. Karina told friends at least one of her boys had been diagnosed with autism and she believed her husband was affected too.

They were polar opposites. He “didn’t lift a finger” around the house and couldn’t stand to be around his children.

Their house was divided, with a parents’ retreat at the back that was off limits to their four kids. Stephen used to go in there to read.

“She did everything. He just did what he wanted to do,” the friend said.

“She left him a couple of times and she went down to her parents (interstate) with the kids — just up and went, left everything,” the friend said.

“Of course he hounded her and promised he was going to change. Eventually he just reverted back all the time.”

media_camera Police at the scene at Helensvale McDonalds. Photo: Mike Batterham

It got worse over the years. Their children were outdoors kids, but Stephen was fed up with mowing his lawn.

So one day he dug it all up. There was only dirt and rocks left, and the happy sounds of children at play vanished from the neighbourhood overnight.

Once, police arrived on the doorstep. The couple’s youngest daughter was frightened. Dad had been violent, she told the policewoman.

Her mum eventually left it all behind, for the sake of herself but also for her kids.

“She was a Jehovah’s Witness. She tried to get the church members to help him so some of them used to go around and talk to him. He started going there as well and he seemed to be settling down for a while. But he always reverts back.

“She was lovely. She would help anybody. She put up with a lot, probably because of her religion.

“It got to the point where she just said `I can’t take it anymore’, because of the effect it was having on the kids as well.”