A coronial inquest is investigating whether racism played a part in the death of 55-year-old Indigenous woman

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Aboriginal woman Tanya Day died in custody because police failed to conduct adequate checks and did not see her sustain the significant head injury that caused her death, a coronial inquest has heard.

Day, 55, died in Melbourne’s St Vincent’s hospital on 22 December 2017 from a brain haemorrhage caused by a traumatic brain injury sustained when she fell in the Castlemaine police cells on 5 December 2017.

She was taken into custody just before 4pm on a charge of public drunkenness, after police were called to help remove a “drunk passenger” from the Echuca to Melbourne service at Castlemaine.

Conductor Shaun Irvine told the inquest he requested police because he saw “an unruly female lying on the seat and across the aisle way”. He said she was unable to have a “meaningful interaction” with him and, in a statement made soon after Day’s death, said: “I thought she was delirious.”

Irvine only spoke to Day once, for a few minutes. Asked if he considered calling an ambulance instead, given he said he thought she posed a risk only to her own personal safety, Irvine said no.

The lawyer for Day’s family, Peter Morrissey, asked if Irvine considered offering Day a drink of water, or asking if she was OK, before requesting that police be notified. He said no.

“In short, did you offer any help of any sort?” Morrissey asked.

“No,” Irvine said.

“Why not?”

“Look, I am not sure specifically.”

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Police took Day into custody after first trying to organise for a family member to collect her and said they intended to hold her for four hours to “sober up”. She was supposed to be checked and physically roused every 30 minutes.

Instead, a coronial inquest heard, police decided to check her every 20 minutes but only rouse her every 40 minutes. They did not physically enter the holding cell and attempt to rouse the Yorta Yorta woman until 8.03pm, when they were preparing to release her.

CCTV footage from the holding cell, which will be played in court, showed Day fell five times between 4.20pm and 6.39pm, including falling forward to hit her forehead on the wall at 4.50pm.

It was “a significant impact”, Catherine Fitzgerald, the counsel assisting the coroner said.

Medical expert Dr Michael Burke, who watched the footage, said that fall was “a very significant blunt impact which could be expected to form a brain injury and subsequent haemorrhage”.

Morrissey, said the failure of police to adequately care for Day when she was in their custody, and the likelihood that racial bias played a role in the decision of both police and V/Line staff to take Day from the train in the first place, were her children’s main concerns.

“How can it be that a woman so much loved, whose difficulties are dwarfed by her good and valuable qualities, who was hurting no one, abusing and hitting no one, importuning no one, could be removed in a manner of minutes from a train on which she was travelling?” Morrissey said.

The Andrews government announced ahead of the inquest that it would abolish the crime of public drunkenness.

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More than 60 people gathered at the Kings Domain for a smoking ceremony ahead of the inquest. Belinda Stevens said the circumstances surrounding her mother’s death “ have made the past 18 months extremely difficult for our family and we want to know the truth and we want justice for our mum”.

The coroner will rule on Tuesday morning on whether to immediately release all the CCTV footage that will be shown during the course of the inquest, in accordance with the family’s wishes. Lawyers for all other parties apart from Day’s family oppose footage being released before it is played in court.

The inquest will hear from almost 30 witnesses and run for three weeks.