Tragedy a ‘tough day at office’

COOK Shire Council Mayor Peter Scott sent an email that described the death of a 17year-old girl as a “tough day at the office”.

Holly Winta Brown died after a cardiac arrest on June 27, 2015, while at the Laura Races and Rodeo event.

Yesterday her mother Elle Brown questioned Cook Shire Council chief executive Tim Cronin about the email, which was sent to one of the councillors on the Monday after her daughter’s death.

“He’s attached a Cairns Post article to this email and he said, ‘Tough day at the office ... at the end of a very busy week, but no better man to be on hand,’ ” Mrs Brown said during her daughter’s inquest.

Mr Cronin said he believed the mayor had been providing support to the councillor affected by the tragedy.

“I think he was acknowledging the difficulty and the tragic circumstances of Holly’s death,” he said.

Mrs Brown said: “Tough day at the office ... It was a little bit more than a tough day at the office.”

Holly was found unconscious by her father Warren Brown about 9am.

Her family and bystanders, including off-duty Cairns Hospital emergency nurse Jenae Ives, were already responding when the on-call nurse Katherine Leighton made it to the scene about 50 minutes later.

It was an hour before two nurses – Patricia Harvey and Krystal Farrelly, from the Laura Primary Health Care Centre – arrived with a defibrillator, but not enough oxygen. They had been on fatigue leave, which meant their phones were diverted. INQUEST: Holly Winta Brown died at the Laura Races and Rodeo in 2015.

“Was that too long?” Mrs Brown asked medical emergency management expert associate professor Mark Little. “It is,” he said. Queensland Ambulance Service Torres and Cape area manager Warren Martin yesterday said he was aware of “some issues around the level of response”.

QAS had been organised to provide a crew for the event later that day, but there was no paramedic on-site at the time Holly began to deteriorate.

“It became clearer to me when I arrived that there was a level of tension,” he said.

Coroner Nerida Wilson said it seemed like the communication at that time “occurred by bush telegraph, hoping that the right people were in the right place at the right time”.

“There were some people that didn’t appear to even care about doing well,” she said.

“The lack of regard for wanting even a mediocre system or a basic system in place is breathtaking.”

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