Almost three years ago, two young men became household names in the worst possible way.
The family of Kumanjayi Walker has given permission for his image to be used.
Kumanjayi Walker, a 19-year-old man from the remote Indigenous community of Yuendumu, 300km from Alice Springs, became another Aboriginal death in custody.
Zachary Rolfe, a then-28-year-old Alice Springs-based police officer, became the cop charged with his murder.
Both names were dragged through the Northern Territory's legal system, and the international media, for more than two years before Constable Rolfe was found not guilty of Kumanjayi Walker's murder in March 2022.
The officer was also found not guilty of two alternative charges of manslaughter and engaging in a violent act causing death.
The charging, trial and verdict tore apart sections of the community.
Kumanjayi Walker's devastated family are still grieving, and searching for answers.
Constable Rolfe and his supporters were scathing of the police investigation which led to him being charged in the first place, feeling he was a "sacrificial lamb" and had only been doing his job.
The Northern Territory Police force itself has yet to recover from the effects of Mr Walker's death.
His family and community likely never will.
Weeks after the Supreme Court verdict, Northern Territory Coroner Libby Armitage acknowledged a lot had been said about the 19-year-old's death in the years since the shooting, but that the voices of his family had "not yet had an opportunity to be heard and understood".
So, she set September 5 as the date for a three-month coronial inquest to begin, examining the circumstances of Kumanjayi Walker's death.
What we already know
Kumanjayi Walker died at the Yuendumu police station on the night of November 9, 2019, hours after he had been shot three times by Constable Zachary Rolfe.
Constable Rolfe was a member of the specialist 'Immediate Response Team', deployed to Yuendumu from Alice Springs that day.
The officer understood he was to arrest Mr Walker for a breach of bail and assaulting police, after he had run at other officers with an axe during an earlier attempt to arrest him.
On the evening of November 9, Constable Rolfe and his partner approached Mr Walker inside house 511 to arrest him.
A struggle broke out after Mr Walker, clutching a pair of scissors, stabbed Constable Rolfe in the shoulder.
He was shot three times; either the second or third shot ultimately killed him.
Mr Walker was taken to the Yuendumu Police Station where officers continued to provide first aid – there were no medical staff in the community that night, as they had been evacuated earlier that day due to a spate of break-ins.
His family waited outside in the dark, both literally and figuratively, as the 19-year-old died in the cells.
Four days later, Constable Rolfe was charged with murder.
Outrage and hurt, on both sides, has been palpable since.
What the Coroner will examine
Preliminary hearings in the lead up to the marathon inquest revealed the coroner aimed to answer a list of more than fifty questions throughout the inquest, including:
- What happened at house 511 Yuendumu on 9/11/19?
- Was it appropriate for the IRT to be deployed to Yuendumu? If so, was it appropriate that they carry military style weapons?
- Has there been a "militarisation" of the Northern Territory Police Force?
- Is the training of Northern Territory police adequate or should it be improved?
- Is there any evidence of systemic racism or cultural bias in the Northern Territory Police Force (or some sections of it)?
- Is there evidence that Constable Rolfe used drugs that impacted on his conduct on 9/11/19?
Many of the topics on the list of issues were covered throughout the five-week murder trial of Constable Rolfe at the Supreme Court in Darwin, and many of the issues were not in dispute.
However, due to the legal constraints of jury trials, there were topics, opinions and pieces of "tendency" evidence that were unable to be aired in open court.
The rules of evidence do not apply to the coroner as they do to a criminal court.
Constable Rolfe's lawyers have already told the coroner they do not want to see a "roving Royal Commission into the conduct of Constable Rolfe" and that the officer is "alive to the positives" that could come from the inquest.
Counsel Assisting the Coroner, Dr Peggy Dwyer, told a hearing in May "everybody has suffered great trauma in having to relive the circumstances of Kumanjayi's tragic death from the trial" so the inquest will likely delve into the circumstances in a different way.
Who will we hear from?
A draft list of witnesses has been released by the coroner's office, with more than 80 people expected to give evidence over the three months.
A handful of Kumanjayi Walker's family members, including his cousin Samara Fernandez-Brown, are on the current list of witnesses, as well as other community members and members of the Parumpurru Committee from Yuendumu.
Constable Rolfe himself is listed to give evidence to the coroner.
Northern Territory Police officers make up a significant portion of the witnesses expected to be called, including Deputy Commissioner Michael Murphy, Deputy Commissioner Murray Smallpage, Acting Deputy Commissioner Michael White and Assistant Commissioner Martin Dole.
Now retired Commander David Proctor and Detective Superintendent Scott Pollock, who oversaw the coronial investigation in its early days, are also expected to give evidence.
The draft witness list includes staff from the Yuendumu Health Clinic, the Warlpiri Youth Development Aboriginal Corporation, Central Australian Aboriginal Alcohol Programmes Unit and various expert witnesses on a variety of topics.
How the inquest will work
Nine "interested parties" will have a seat at the bar table over the next three months, with permission to ask questions of the witnesses called to give evidence to the coroner.
They include lawyers for Constable Rolfe, Kumanjayi Walker's family, the Yuendumu community, NT Police, the NT Police Association, the NT Health department, and the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency.
Coroner Libby Armitage previously said the inquest will provide an opportunity for Mr Walker's family to express their "distress, fears and concerns and hopes for the future".
"We will endeavour to not simply hear you, but to understand you," she said.
"In a fair and balanced way, we will seek to better understand what happened on 9 November 2019, and why it happened, with the goals of determining the truth and making recommendations which may assist in preventing future deaths in similar circumstances."
The inquest is scheduled to run until the end of November, in Alice Springs, with the coroner expected to visit Yuendumu at some stage throughout.
