As the family of a teen shot by Northern Territory police gathered for news about their loved one, they also worried about their safety, an inquest has heard. 

September 7, 2022

The family of an Indigenous teenager killed by a Northern Territory policeman feared for their lives in the hours after he was shot, an inquest has been told.

Kumanjayi Walker, 19, died on November 9, 2019, after Constable Zachary Rolfe, 31, shot him three times in the remote community of Yuendumu, 290km northwest of Alice Springs.

As he lay dying on the floor of the local police station, his family and the Warlpiri community gathered to find if the rumours that he’d been shot were true, his cousin Samara Fernandez-Brown told the inquest into his death on Wednesday.

A video of the night played to the Alice Springs hearing shows about 100 people waiting for news outside the building.

“We don’t know what is happening, we got told he has been shot and he is bleeding and at the house there is three cases, gun shells and a lot of blood,” Ms Fernandez-Brown says in the recording.

“No one had told us if he’s alive.”

The court heard his family and community elders repeatedly asked the eight police officers inside the station for information about Mr Walker in the hours after he was shot at 7.22pm but they were told nothing.

Inside the station police fought to save Mr Walker’s life in the absence of trained medical staff but they kept his family locked outside.

Mr Walker died at 8.36pm but police said nothing and instead formed a plan to trick the community into believing he was still alive out of fear for their own safety.

Outside, the Yuendumu community was also afraid – that the police they had seen patrolling their community with a shotgun and an AR15 assault rifle earlier in the evening may shoot another community member.

“By that point we were already angry and distressed and fearful,” Ms Fernandez-Brown.

“There could have been a reaction there but it was subdued by elders and community members because they knew … if there was a reaction it could have prompted another shooting.”

The police later formed a convoy of vehicles inside the station compound, including an ambulance, and sped to the airport to meet a plane.

But it was bringing in police reinforcements, not flying Mr Walker to hospital in Alice Springs as his family assumed.

“It was my genuine belief that he was being flown to Alice Springs and … that he was being treated and there was opportunity to put him in a stable condition and for him survive,” Ms Fernandez-Brown said.

Police finally told some of Mr Walker’s family that he had died about 11pm.

“Nobody deserves what he had in his last moments,” Ms Fernandez-Brown said crying in the witness box in reference to his family not being allowed to comfort him.

The hearing continues.