Yuendumu nurses reveal chaos in community following the shooting death of Kumanjayi Walker

Nurses were given no choice but to evacuate Yuendumu on the morning Kumanjayi Walker died. They had to leave the morgue door open before a significant funeral, an inquest has heard.

Nurses in Yuendumu on the day Kumanjayi Walker was killed, were given no choice about whether to leave the community that morning and were forced to leave the morgue door propped open with a rock ahead of a significant funeral, a court has heard.

On Tuesday, remote area nurse Cassandra Holland took the stand at an inquest into the 19-year-old’s 2019 police shooting death, telling Coroner Elisabeth Armitage NT Health management should have come to Yuendumu instead of insisting the nurses leave.

The move followed an escalating series of break-ins at the nurses’ homes during that week, but Ms Holland said she did not believe evacuating the health clinic staff by 11am the next day was appropriate.

“I’ve worked in a lot of clinics where the nurses have been under threat and they’ve been given options to leave, I’ve never been one of those nurses to ever leave a community,” she said.

“I don’t believe any community should be left without health services.”

Ms Holland said there were “a lot of sick people” in the community and by “encouraging the nurses to make a definite decision”, management had put them “in a very difficult position”.

“We were advised by management to tell as many people in community that it looked like the nurses were going to leave, and at that stage, going around town, a lot of people put their hand up for medication,” she said.

“I went back to the clinic, got their medication and spent quite a considerable time delivering medication.”

Ms Holland said there remained a significant number of people she was unable to reach and told her bosses “she did not feel unsafe and I wished to stay in community”, but was told it was “was one out all out”.

“I was told in no uncertain terms that I had no choice,” she said.

“It was a group that were tired and they were each looking at each other saying ‘Are we going to leave?’, that type of thing.

“Not one of them put their hands up and said get me out of here real quick.

“We were given no alternative, there was no alternative to say if we stayed we’d be made more secure, that wasn’t entered into.”

It was then Ms Holland said she took a “very abusive, very aggressive phone call” from local man Robbie Robertson, who was upset that the health staff were leaving on the day of a senior community member’s funeral.

“I spent quite a deal of time trying to get Robbie to calm down so that I could discuss this with him, the phone call escalated to the extent that I had to disconnect the phone,” she said.

“Robbie then called me back and apologised for yelling, and we then had a very calm discussion about the fact that the health staff would not be leaving until 2 o’clock when he had access to that body.

“I guaranteed him that we would be there to organise to help him with that.”

Ms Holland said she again contacted Mr Robertson and learned that the funeral would now not start until after 4pm, while “management kept saying ‘You have to leave now’”.

“I drove over to the morgue, he drove over to the morgue with a group of people in the vehicle that they were using, I explained, we went through it together and I said ‘You will have absolute access’,” she said.

“(But) the body wasn’t removed at the time of opening it, so we had all the gates open, we had the morgue propped open with a rock, we didn’t keep it wide open, so that they had full access and then I explained to them all how to turn off the generator, how to lock the morgue.”

Ms Holland said she was later told by her managers that she would not be returning to Yuendumu and was only able to go back to retrieve her belongings “providing nobody saw me” and was “used as a scapegoat” for the evacuation.

On Monday, another nurse, Vanessa Watts, relived in her evidence the moment a group of teenagers tried to break into her neighbour’s house in the middle of the night armed with shovels and pickaxes a day earlier.

Ms Watts told the court she was woken by the sound of banging at her door at about midnight on November 8, but went back to bed after the people outside ran away when she turned on a light.

Ms Watts told the court she was woken by the sound of banging at her door at about midnight on November 8, but went back to bed after the people outside ran away when she turned on a light.

Not long after, she said a group returned to the area and started trying to break into her neighbour’s house with such force “the whole house was shaking”.

Ms Watts said she “regularly” had “young teenagers” trying her door handle or sneaking into her garage during her three years at Yuendumu, but usually felt her home was secure enough to deter any would-be burglars.

Counsel assisting Peggy Dwyer (right) arrives at the Alice Springs Local Court with Maria Walz and Patrick Coleridge on Tuesday. Picture: Jason Walls

“You’d just hear the door, we had screen doors, so you’d hear the door, but I never had anything like that night, with that force, I’d never had that experience before,” she said.

“I think I was a little bit scared, just because of the real force that was being used.

“I later found (out) that they were using shovels and pickaxes and stuff, and that window had been the window that they previously broke into, so it had been reinforced, so that’s why they needed to use a lot of force.”

Ms Watts said she called the police, with a “sympathetic” sergeant in charge, Julie Frost, responding and telling her “the police were getting additional resources out from Alice Springs the following day to help with the problem”.

Those additional resources included Constable Zach Rolfe who would go on to fatally shoot Mr Walker less than 24 hours later.

Constable Rolfe was acquitted on all charges in March and the inquest continues in the Alice Springs Local Court on Wednesday.