Coroner finds police were not responsible for any of the crashes and says blame lies with drivers of vehicles being pursued

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A coroner investigating the deaths of six people who died in traffic crashes connected to police pursuits in Western Australia has made just one recommendation: that police receive more funding to operate its helicopter division to monitor chases from the air.

The findings by the WA state coroner, Ros Fogliani, were released this week following an inquest in March last year.

She found that police were not responsible for any of the crashes, despite being engaged in chasing the car at fault either immediately prior to, or at the time of, the crash.

Instead, she said, the blame lay with the drivers of the vehicles being pursued, five of which had high levels of methamphetamine in their blood and all of which, she said, had the option of not fleeing police but instead chose to drive in a reckless and dangerous manner.

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She encouraged, but did not recommend, that police continue to promote other alternative strategies to high-speed pursuits. Monitoring the situation from the helicopter was one of those strategies.

Twenty-seven people died in crashes connected to police pursuits in WA between 2010 and 2016, the inquest heard.

Of the 5,278 pursuits conducted in that period, 38% resulted in someone being arrested while 16% ended in a crash.

The first two deaths examined at the inquest were of 28-year-old taxi driver Kuldeep Singh and his passenger, 36-year-old Sean Duncan Barrett, a lecturer in physics from Imperial College in London, who died in the early hours of 19 October 2012.

Barrett arrived in Perth that day for a conference and was picked up from the airport by Singh. They were struck on route by a stolen 4WD that ran a red light and killed instantly.

Police had been chasing the 4WD for eight minutes but called it off at 1.48pm, four minutes before the crash, because the police control centre, which maintains radio contact with any officers engaged in a pursuit and must give approval before a pursuit is undertaken, deemed it too risky to continue.

Despite being called off, one car continued to follow the 4WD with its lights and sirens blaring. Fogliani found that car did not contribute to the crash, because it was 2km back and the driver’s drug level meant he would likely be driving erratically independently of police interference.

The inquest also examined the death of Gavin Wayne Fryer, 28, who died on 12 February 2013, after a Holden commodore being driven by his friend sped through a stop sign and hit a Holden Astra, which he was driving. The inquest heard police had tried stop the Commodore on two occasions but had not tried to pursue.

Aboriginal woman Ms Narrier, 23, died on 13 November 2014 when a car being driven by her partner crashed head-on while driving on the wrong side of Thomas Road. They had been pursued for 11 minutes; the police called off the pursuit moments earlier when the car went on to the wrong side of the road.

Neither Narrier nor her partner’s four-year-old nephew, who was seriously injured in the crash, were wearing seatbelts.

Jordan Damon Rundell, 28, died on 11 January 2014 when his motorcycle crashed into the back of a car while he was trying to evade police after pulling out of a booze bus line.

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Hassan El Bakdadi, 29, died less than a minute after police asked for approval to pursue the yellow Suzuki he was driving, tipped off by his wonky number plate. He took a sweeping right hand bend at 100km/h then crashed into a tree.

Prof David Joyce, a toxicologist, told the inquest that El Bakdadi had methylapmetamine, heroin and codeine in his blood at levels that would kill most people.

In a statement, a spokesman said WA Police noted the coroner’s findings and “remains committed to management and resolution strategies that bring pursuits to a safe conclusion”.