Four days after Christmas 2015, Leetona Dungay’s son David Dungay Jr died in Sydney’s Long Bay jail. Prison officers stormed his cell after he refused to stop eating a packet of biscuits. He was restrained and administered a sedative, midazolam, and died.

Clockwise from top: a photo of the Dungay children – David is second from the right; Leetona Dungay’s lounge room; David’s bedroom which is now filled with memories of his life; a railway bridge that crosses the Macleay River in Kempsey



Leetona is a Dunghutti woman from Kempsey, just off the Macleay River on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. She has four children. David was her youngest boy.

Clockwise from the top: a photo of David Dungay Jr in his football clothes; a mural painted by the Dungay family on a property they used to live in at Burnt Bridge; a house in Kempsey that David grew up in

When David was six he was diagnosed with type two insulin-dependent diabetes. Almost all cases of type two diabetes occur in adults over 40, and managing it is no easy task. So when David was diagnosed his health became Leetona’s full-time job.

“I was going to write a book on it. Because no one knew how to respond and bring up your child on diabetes and how to treat it,” Leetona says. “I was his nurse and his diabetes educator.”

Ernie Dungay

Is there the death penalty in Australia? Because that’s what happened to my little brother Ernie Dungay

David’s big brother, Ernie, and his eldest sister, Christine, still live in Kempsey, within walking distance of their mum. David followed in Ernie’s footsteps and took up football at a young age. He had natural talent, Ernie says. It was in his blood. Everyone who knew David remembers his skill on the field. Ernie dressed David in his own football guernsey when they buried him.

Christine Dungay

David was three weeks away from release after serving almost eight years for assault, aggravated attempted sexual intercourse and party to robbery. His big sister Christine, now with six children of her own, didn’t see David while he was incarcerated. Her job is to keep everybody else going.

Cynthia is the youngest of the Dungay siblings. She moved from Kempsey so she could visit David when he was shifted from Kempsey correctional centre, first to Junee, and then to Long Bay in Sydney. Cynthia spent hours on the bus with her three kids so she could visit her brother every two weeks.

It just made me feel better. Knowing I was closer to him Cynthia Dungay

“I still remember the day the police came to the house to inform us,” says Paul Silva, David’s nephew. “I haven’t been the same since; my family haven’t been the same since.”

The day after David died, Leetona and her family gathered at home to figure out what came next.

David Dungay’s niece, Christine, and his nephew Paul Silva

The last two and a half years have been filled with rallies in support of David and protests against other deaths in custody.

The family marched outside Long Bay the year he died, and they march through Kempsey every year, ending with a family barbecue on the Macleay River.

Christine Dungay and her partner, Raymond Quinlan, the morning of a protest in Kempsey on 9 June

“No family should have to go through all of this: the trauma, the pain, the heartache, to gather like this as a community or a family. We should gather like this at Christmas time, not to protest a death of a person that was locked up in custody,” Silva says.

Left to right: Leetona Dungay and David’s nephew Paul Silva at a protest in Kempsey

“When we do get justice, it might make us feel a bit better, but we’ll still go to sleep knowing we lost an uncle or brother.”



Left to right: Thelma Kelly attends the protests in support of the Dungay family; a smoke ceremony is performed during a protest on 9 June

“It feels good,” Silva says. “We are not doing the march for ourselves. We are doing it for David and other deaths in custody because it really needs to stop.”

When Leetona returns to Kempsey after a rally or visiting the coroner’s court, she always goes to see David at the cemetery: “Every time I get back from Sydney I come to the grave.”

I am here now to tell him I am going back to get justice once and for all Leetona Dungay

On 16 July the coronial inquest into David’s death begins in Sydney after almost three years of waiting. Leetona hopes the inquest will shed light on how and why he died. She says Corrective Services NSW and Justice Health need to be held accountable so she can come back to Kempsey and tell David he can now rest in peace.

• Words by Lorena Allam, Taylor Fuller and Miles Herbert