Kumanjayi Walker inquest: flying doctor pilots feared remote NT community runway may have been ‘sabotaged’, court told
The Royal Flying Doctor Service refused to fly to an Indigenous community after a police officer shot and severely wounded Kumanjayi Walker, a Northern Territory inquest has been told.
The 19-year-old died on the floor of the Yuendumu police station as the pilots allegedly argued about the state of the runway in the remote community north-west of Alice Springs.
The inquest into Walker’s death on 9 November 2019 was told that immediately after the shooting, Sen Sgt Terry Zhang and other officers were ordered to fly with the RFDS to Yuendumu to back up police on the ground.
But when they got to the Alice Springs airport the pilots in charge of the RFDS plane refused to take off, the court heard on Thursday.
“I entered their hangar, the nurses were loading up the aircraft and I spoke to … the pilot,” Zhang told the coroner. “It was a robust conversation and he said they were not prepared to leave Alice Springs unless we can provide them with an assurance that the runway is safe to land.”
The pilots were concerned the Indigenous community in Yuendumu may have “sabotaged the runway” making it unsafe to land.
“To give them some assurance … [we were] making phone calls back to the station [in the community] to see if someone could actually observe or see the runway physically,” Zhang said.
The pilots and police also discussed flying to another community near Yuendumu to wait “until it was safe”.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter and afternoon email to get your daily news roundup
“While that was occurring … 20 minutes or half an hour, I got a phone call that Kumanjayi had passed away, so there was no need for the RFDS to attend,” Zhang said. “I relayed that to the pilot.”
Zhang and the other officers then walked to the NT police air wing hangar to travel on another plane but the pilot was not available, because he was training.
He eventually arrived and refuelled the plane. The team then made a delayed departure for Yuendumu without the RFDS.
Earlier, the commander of the elite tactical police unit sent to secure the community after the shooting, Sgt Meacham King, criticised the actions of Const Zachary Rolfe and his team before Rolfe fatally shot Walker.
They had undertaken so-called intelligence gathering in preparation for an approved arrest early the following morning when the Warlpiri man was likely to be sleepy and easily detained.
They did this by visiting his relatives’ homes and asking where he was. But King told the coroner Rolfe and his team weren’t intelligence gathering.
“They [were] actually searching and looking to apprehend Kumanjayi at that point in time,” the veteran policeman told the inquest.
“The idea of intelligence gathering is to understand the layout of a place to get intelligence on how you would affect the apprehension at 5am … but not actually attend the residence.”
King said “intelligence gathering would be to drive past [the house] to get an understanding of where the doors are and how to get through the gate”.
The inquest continues.