Indigenous woman’s children call for criminal investigation and say systemic racism was a cause of her death

The family of Yorta Yorta woman Tanya Day, who died in police custody, have made a plea to Victoria’s coroners court for individual police officers to be held accountable for her death.

“We know that our mum died in custody because police targeted her for being drunk in public and then failed to properly care for her after they locked her up,” her children – Belinda Stevens, Warren Stevens, Kimberly Watson and Apryl Watson – said in a statement issued before final oral submissions began in the inquest into her death began on Monday.

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“We know that racism was a cause of our mum’s death. Both individual police officers and Victoria police as a whole must be held to account. Without accountability, more Aboriginal people will die in custody.”

Day fell asleep on a V/Line train on her way to Melbourne on 5 December 2017. She was woken by police and then arrested for being drunk in a public place, though she had caused no disturbance. She hit her head on a cell wall, the inquest heard, causing a fatal haemorrhage, but an ambulance was not called for over three hours. She died 17 days later from a brain haemorrhage after emergency surgery failed.

Day’s children said they want Victoria police, V/Line and Ambulance Victoria to be held to account through a finding that systemic racism was a cause of their mother’s death. They also want the coroner to make a recommendation that police stop investigating other police.

“What we now want is a criminal investigation,” they said in the statement. “We want to know whether the police who should have cared for Mum committed an offence in denying Mum her dignity and, ultimately, her life.”

Their final submission to the court includes a section that recounts Day’s experience in her own words. Her children said they decided to write the submission in this way in order to give their mother a voice. It reads:

“I loved my children so much. I taught them to laugh and have fun, and to be strong and proud of who they are, and to fight for what was right and against what was wrong. I am so proud of how they have grown up, as strong, courageous, resilient, cheeky, kind humans who are proud to be Aboriginal.

“I am proud, too, of the way they have fought against the injustice of my death.”

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It goes on to say: “I can’t explain to you how it felt to be in that cell, because only another Aboriginal person could really understand.”

“I felt very alone. I started feeling very woozy. I tripped and fell. I smashed my head on the wall. I kind of knew it would kill me. It didn’t really surprise me, because I had felt so scared of dying in that cell. But the next few hours were so painful and scary.

“I knew it was really bad, that I was going to die, but everyone just kept acting like nothing was going on, like everything was normal and fine.”

Victoria police say there has been no evidence in the inquest into the death of Tanya Day that officers should be criminally investigated.



But lawyer for Victoria police chief commissioner Graham Ashton, Rachel Ellyard, told the court on Monday morning the submission reflects the family’s “feelings” and “deep distress” over the death.

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“Those reflections ... are not evidence,” she said. “They are not the material upon which Your Honour can act. She said the inquest heard no evidence that an indictable offence occurred.

“The evidence isn’t there. If it were, Your Honour would long since have made the referral.

She added: “There was no inappropriate regard, consciously or unconsciously, to her [Day’s] Aboriginality.”

Legal director at the Human Rights Law Centre, Ruth Barson, is representing the Day family and said no police officer has ever been held criminally responsible for an Aboriginal person’s death in custody.

When it concluded almost 30 years ago, the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody recommended abolishing the offence of public drunkenness. In August, the Victorian government announced it would scrap the offence and replace it with a public health response.