A social justice activist, and the cousin of Kumanjayi Walker, has appeared as the first witness at the coronial inquest into the Warlpiri teenager's death.
Dressed in black, Samara Fernandez-Brown spoke in emotional terms of her cousin, telling the coroner's court of a young man who "loved his family and... was very loved."
“Regardless of what he’d done... nobody deserves what he had in his last moments,” she told the inquest.
Walker died after being shot three times by NT Police Officer Zachary Rolfe during a botched arrest at Yuendumu in November 2019.
A Supreme Court jury found Constable Rolfe not guilty of murder and two alternative charges in March this year.
Ms Fernandez-Brown told how officers left the family without information on the steps of the police station for hours, while Kumanjayi Walker lay dying inside.
“It just felt, again, very disrespectful to me, and to the family, and to Kumanjayi,” she said.
“If this was kartiya [white person] the treatment would have been vastly different, and so a lot of community members believe that treatment had a lot to do with systemic racism.”
Kumanjayi Walker died after being shot three times by Constable Zachary Rolfe during a botched arrest in 2019. Source: Supplied
Family told nothing for four hours
Ms Fernandez-Brown described for the inquest how, arriving back to Yuendumu following a funeral, she was informed of the shooting.
As counsel assisting the coroner Dr Peggy Dwyer outlined in her opening address, there was no medical staff in the community at the time. The nurses had evacuated earlier in the day due to a series of break-ins, later attributed to a 12-year-old child.
With no health clinic to attend, Ms Fernandez-Brown said the community went to the police station to check on Kumanjayi’s condition.
She described four anxious hours of waiting, without any information from the police.
Miss Fernandez-Brown said she made the difficult decision to film the family gathered outside the police station.
“My rationale around doing this was, ‘if we don’t [film this]… nobody’s gonna believe that we were calm,'" she told the inquest.
“There would have been this concept that we outside would have been doing the wrong thing.”
The videos, played in court, show family members worried for the safety of Kumanjayi and expressing frustration with the police, but also encouraging each other to remain calm.
Rolfe evacuated following Kumanjayi's death
In what she described as a ‘sly and sneaky’ move, Ms Fernandez-Brown said police then evaded family and Elders, leaving them standing out the front as officers left out the back.
“They didn’t have their lights on when they were travelling, and they were going at such a fast speed out the back of the police station,” she said.
With news of a chartered flight reaching the family, Ms Fernandez-Brown told the inquest that, without information from the police, family assumed that Kumanjayi had been flown to treatment.
She said it wasn’t until later they learned it was Constable Rolfe who had been evacuated and that, by that time, Kumanjayi had already died.
Constable Zachary Rolfe following his acquittal earlier this year. Source: AAP
Betrayed by colleagues and the police
Derek Williams was a Senior Aboriginal Community Controlled Police Officer in the Yuendumu community at the time of Kumanjayi Walker’s shooting.
Giving evidence at the inquest this morning he said he saw officers doing CPR on his nephew and went outside to be with his community and help keep people calm.
The inquest heard Mr Williams was also led to believe Kumanjayi Walker was undergoing first aid in the station and that the teenager had been flown out of the community for treatment in Alice Springs.
After the plane left, he said he went home with his daughter, only to be woken by members of the NT Police’s Tactical Response Group (TRG).
“TRG knocked on my door, that was about four o’clock [in the morning] and they said Kumanjayi had passed away and they wanted me to identify the body,” Derek Williams said.
“I told them that I can’t identify the body because [of] cultural significance.”
He said he was surprised and angry.
“I felt betrayed by my colleagues and the police force and at the time I wanted to quit,” Derek Williams said.
Still employed as a Senior ACPO Derek Williams told the inquest that changes are needed and any arrest plan in a remote community must include an ACPO or an Elder.
“After what happened that night the respect for police isn’t there anymore, so you need elders and community members to build those relationships going forward.”
A power imbalance that needs addressing
Ms Fernandez-Brown told the inquest there was a clear imbalance of power in the way the NT Police operated in Aboriginal communities, and that further harm was done in the days after the death, as heavily armed police made their presence felt in the community.
“As Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people we know that... we know that we have to be on our best behaviour.”
“[They were] parading around the weaponry that we knew had just taken the life of our community member,” she said.
“It felt like a show of power... it was gut wrenching.”
Almost three years on Ms Fernandez-Brown told the inquest she has lingering anxiety from the incident and is constantly fearful for the safety of her family and for the safety of young people in Yuendumu.
The inquest continues.
