Ms Dhu's family tell rally she has been painted as a drug dealer during inquest
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Version 0 of 1. Carol Roe, the grandmother of Aboriginal woman Ms Dhu, who died of a severe infection in police custody last year despite twice being declared medically fit to be held in police cells, has said the coronial inquest has unfairly cast her granddaughter as a drug dealer. Related: Ms Dhu inquest: doctors 'would have made a lot more effort’ if she was white Dhu, a 22-year-old Yamatji woman whose first name is not used at the request of her family, was arrested in Port Hedland, 1,600km north of Perth, Western Australia, on August 2, 2014, and declared dead less than 45 hours later at Hedland health campus. A coronial inquest, which has been running for seven days at Perth’s central law courts, has heard that she died of advanced staphylococcal septicemia and pneumonia that originated from a fractured rib broken in an alleged domestic violence incident three months earlier. Video footage from inside the South Hedland police station shows her moaning and crying in pain within a few hours of her arrest, and shows her condition apparently deteriorating over the two days to the point where she could no longer sit or stand up. But nurses who saw Dhu about 18 hours before her death told the inquest they attributed her symptoms, which at that time were complaints of all-over pain, dehydration, and a racing heart-rate, to drug withdrawal. At a rally outside the Perth courthouse on Wednesday, Roe, known as Aunty Carol, told a crowd of about 40 family, friends, supporters, and media that Dhu had been “treated like a dog” by medical staff, in part because she admitted to being an intravenous drug user. “This little girl, she was a happy-go-lucky kid,” Roe said. “She would help anybody. [She was] bubbly and sweet. “And they just targeted her, up in that courthouse, as a drug dealer.” Asked if she was angry that Dhu had been “robbed of justice,” Roe replied: “She was robbed of her life. Not justice, her life.” “What makes me the angriest?” Roe said. “Because my granddaughter is not here. If they had looked after her at the hospital she would be walking the earth today.” Coroner Ros Fogliani announced last week that the inquest, which was scheduled to finish on Friday, would not now be completed until March 2016, to give the double-row of lawyers enough time to cross-examine each witness. That means the remaining witnesses, including all police officers, will wait another three months to give evidence. Dhu’s uncle, Shaun Harris, said news of the delay had caused more pain to his family. He told the rally that the too many witnesses had already answered the court’s questions with “don’t recall”. “Just what will the 10 police officers recall come 14 March, or will they also join in saying that they ‘don’t recall’ what bloody happened?” Harris said. Harris called on the WA premier, Colin Barnett, to immediately introduce a custody notification service as part of his promised measures to reduce Aboriginal deaths in custody. Barnett said in June that his government would introduce the service, but the timing of that implementation depends on a ministerial working group. In a statement announcing his intention to introduce the notification service, Barnett said: “We acknowledge there are too many situations where the cumulative effect of minor infractions, problems with drugs or alcohol or difficulty complying with everyday procedural requirements of the law due to remoteness or disadvantage, unnecessarily escalates into a jail term, especially for Aboriginal people.” A custody notification service would ensure the Aboriginal legal service was automatically notified any time an Indigenous person was taken into police custody. It is already in place in New South Wales and was one of the 339 recommendations of the 1991 royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody. Tammy Solonec, Indigenous rights manager for Amnesty International Australia, told the rally on Wednesday that Dhu’s death, and other similar deaths, could have been prevented if all the royal commission’s recommendations had been implemented. Solonec compared Dhu’s death to that of Ngaanyatjarra elder Mr Ward, who died after getting third-degree burns in the back of an un-airconditioned police van on a 570km journey from Laverton, in outback WA, to Kalgoorlie in 2008. “This man, like Ms Dhu, had been treated like an animal,” Solonec said. “And he was allowed to burn in the back of a police van, why? Because he was Aboriginal and because the system was against him.” Related: Ms Dhu inquest: what we know so far about police and medical responses Solonec said both Dhu and Ward’s deaths “involved prejudice and racism, reckless neglect and systemic failure reflecting a deeply broken system, one that must change”. All the medical staff who treated Dhu have rejected the suggestion they would have treated her differently if she had been a white or non-Aboriginal woman. The hospital’s senior medical officer, Dr Ganesan Sakarapani, also told the inquest he rejected the suggestion that Dhu’s care was influenced by institutionalised racism and said that all hospital staff completed an online cultural awareness course. The inquest is expected to hear from two further witnesses on Thursday. |