The coronial inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker has heard for the first time from senior decision-makers in the Northern Territory Health Department, with the general manager of primary health telling the coroner he did not know his nursing staff wanted to stay in the community when he ordered their evacuation.
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains an image of a person who has died, used with the permission of their family.
NT Health manager David Reeve was liaising with weekend management teams when he made the decision to remove all nursing staff from Yuendumu, hours before Mr Walker was fatally shot by Constable Zachary Rolfe in November 2019.
Mr Rolfe has been acquitted of all charges over his death.
Earlier this week, local nursing staff gave evidence that they did not want to leave the community, with that decision coming from senior management.
Dr Reeve on Wednesday gave evidence that he did not speak directly with local police or with local staff because he believed his subordinates had done so.
The coroner was told Dr Reeve believed his staff were at risk because a break-in had happened at the nurse's quarters during the day, with the knowledge that a nurse was inside.
In addition to that, four staff houses had been broken into the evening before the shooting, including three instances when staff were present.
To put the evacuation in context, Northern Territory coroner Elisabeth Armitage was told the evacuation was one of only four instances since late 2018 — when Dr Reeve had started in his role — that a full team of nursing staff had been evacuated from a remote community.
The court was also told it was the only time that nursing staff had been evacuated because of property damage.
Under questioning from Counsel Assisting Patrick Coleridge, Dr Reeve agreed the situation had not been "so urgent" that he could not meet directly with local stakeholders before making the significant decision to withdraw health staff.
He further conceded that he had not attempted to do so.
Police resources would mitigate risk
Dr Reeve was questioned at length about his contact with local stakeholders and about his understanding of the local situation in Yuendumu.
He told the coroner he did not know the special police group that Constable Rolfe was part of and that a dog unit was arriving in community that evening, but told Ms Armitage this knowledge would have affected his risk assessment that day.
He also agreed with a statement from North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA) counsel Beth Wild that he "did not even try" to contact community elders prior to the decision, even though he had done so on a previous, similar occasion.
Dr Reeve also conceded under questioning from Gerard Mullins, who is representing Kumanjayi Walker's family, that Aboriginal health staff "should have been included" in conversations about the decision to evacuate.
"They are members of the community who would have some important data [and] they may be able to offer alternatives that might be available for staff to stay," Mr Mullins told the coroner.
Dr Reeve said he believed Aboriginal health staff had not been consulted because "only the homes of non-Aboriginal staff" had been broken into.
'Makes no sense'
The coroner was told Dr Reeve had taken the decision to evacuate staff seriously and that he had come up with a plan to address the community's safety.
He told the coroner he had believed the Yuendumu staff would evacuate to Yuelamu, 70 kilometres away.
Instead, the court heard, staff had evacuated to Alice Springs.
Ms Armitage was told Dr Reeve "had no idea" that had happened until after the fact, but he understood it was because the nursing staff had wanted to stay together.
"It makes no sense to me why staff didn't go to Yuelamu," he said.
The coroner was told NT Health had not included this "systemic failure" in its review of the night that Mr Walker had died.
Leaving people without assistance
Earlier on Wednesday, the inquest heard from remote area nurse Lorraine Walcott — from the neighbouring community of Yuelamu — who said she remains traumatised by the night's events and felt concerned there had not been enough health staff in the region at the time.
Following the evacuation of nursing staff from Yuendumu earlier that day, Ms Walcott and her colleague were urgently called to the community to attend to Mr Walker, but the coroner was told that, by the time they arrived, Mr Walker had already died.
The coroner heard Ms Walcott was concerned about the request that had come to her and her colleague, for them to cover the evacuated nursing staff in the much-larger neighbouring community of Yuendumu.
"I thought it was a bit steep, to tell the truth, given the size of the community," Ms Walcott said.
"We were a bit concerned about leaving Yuelamu unattended."
Ms Walcott agreed with Counsel Assisting the Coroner Peggy Dwyer that it was "entirely plausible" there could be an emergency in both communities at the same time.
The coroner heard Yuelamu was home to 150 people, many of them elderly and living with serious, chronic illnesses, while Yuendumu was home to 800 people.
She said she felt uncomfortable that it would be "just the two of us" for a population "of that size", but also felt there was no way she could escalate her concerns to NT Health.
During her evidence, she said Yuelamu received an average of three to five callouts a week and, with some members of the community in the end stages of respiratory diseases, it was vital the nurses were able to attend to them.
'We probably should have asked more questions'
Ms Walcott told the coroner she still "loved her job" but had "feared for her life" at times that night, after rocks were thrown into the police compound and at the ambulance she was driving.
The court was told Ms Walcott suffered a head injury when a rock smashed the driver's side window of her vehicle.
Previously, the inquest was told a convoy of police and an NT Health ambulance drove to the community's airstrip shortly after Mr Walker had died as a "decoy", giving community members the impression Mr Walker was being taken to hospital.
On Wednesday, Ms Walcott told the coroner she did not know at the time why she was being asked to travel with two police cars and conceded she should have "asked more questions".
"As embarrassing as that sounds now, we didn't know why we were going, but [the officer in charge of the Yuendumu police station] said, twice, [that] our safety was paramount," she said in court.
The NT Health nurse told the coroner she had assumed the ambulance was going to meet a Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) plane to pick up medical staff but, once they arrived at the airstrip, police officers exited the aircraft.
Once the two police cars had picked up the new officers, they drove back to the local police station, leaving the ambulance at the airstrip.
Unable to catch up with police, the nurses travelled behind them, and it was during this trip that Ms Walcott told the coroner she was struck by a rock, which she said sent her into "fight-or-flight mode".
"I had blood pouring out of my head and didn't know what was happening," Ms Walcott said.
She told the coroner her nursing partner in the nearby community of Yuelamu attended to her wounds, which she suspected included a concussion.
Counsel for Northern Territory Police Amanda Burnnard told Ms Walcott Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker apologised for the position she was put in.
"The commissioner apologises to you for your having been placed in a position in which you were injured by rocks having been thrown at your vehicle by members of the Yuendumu Community," she said.
