A coronial inquest into the deaths of four teenagers in a high-speed stolen car crash has heard details of the devastating toll on family members in the wake of the Townsville tragedy.
Thirteen-year-old Lucius Hure-Hill, now known as Barefoot, 14-year-old Rayveena Coolwell, 14-year-old Cayenne Robertson and 17-year-old Aaliyah Te Paa died on June 7, 2020.
They were passengers in a stolen car that reached speeds of 128 kilometres per hour just seconds before clipping a roundabout and smashing into a traffic light pole.
In a statement read out to the courtroom at the end of the inquest in Townsville, Rayveena’s mother Pamela Coolwell said she and her family were still struggling to comprehend her daughter’s death.
"Rayray was not a street kid. Rayray had a home to come home to. But as you know, she never made it home," she said.
"She had never been in trouble with the police. She had a family who loved her and wanted the best for her.
"She enjoyed school and worked hard but she just fell into the wrong crowd at school.
"She would have been 17 this year. We would have put on a 17th birthday party for her but now we just grieve and mourn because she isn’t coming back."
Barefoot’s grandmother Sanaa Liddle fought back tears as she told the inquest she had been unable to perform traditional end-of-life rituals for her grandson.
"The day I was notified of Barefoot’s death, I feel I was denied my right to do my cultural practice surrounding the passing of an immediate family member," Ms Liddle said.
"There were things I needed to do to his body that I did not get to do.
"I feel I was let down … by a systems approach that is not fit for everyone.
"My grandson was denied his cultural rite of passage from life to death, because of a lack of understanding of how important cultural practices are."
'We can’t arrest our way out of this'
The two-day inquest heard evidence that police officers had followed the stolen car in the lead-up to the crash but did not engage in a pursuit or use their lights and sirens.
The driver and sole survivor, who was 14 at the time of the crash, is currently serving a five-year sentence.
Assistant Commissioner Cheryl Scanlon, who is the head of the Youth Justice Taskforce, told the inquest there had been an upward trend of young people committing motor vehicle offences in recent years.
"Social media is playing a role in that — sadly for some of these young people, that’s the only way they get notoriety," she said.
Assistant Commissioner Scanlon said there was a small cohort of about 400 young people committing the majority of youth crime offences in the state.
But she said Queensland was in a much better place than it was two years ago due to a suite of legislative and policy changes to tackle youth crime.
"There’s no silver bullet to fix the issues we’ve got — you must stay the distance," she said.
“It has to be a much more coordinated system.
"We can’t arrest our way out of this."
Ms Coolwell said she and her family moved away from Townsville in the aftermath of the fatal crash.
"We noticed that our other kids found it difficult at school. They started to follow the wrong crowds because they are not socialising well and they found it hard to sleep, too," she said.
"We didn’t want our other kids to go down that path so we relocated to a new town.
"It was very hard to move away because we felt like we were leaving Rayray behind because she was buried in Townsville."
In closing, State Coroner Terry Ryan addressed the teenagers’ family members.
“I hope the inquest has given you some answers about what occurred early on that morning and also provided some information about the range of responses that the police and other authorities have put in place to try to prevent similar events from happening,” he said.
The coroner will hand down his findings by late January.
