Anthony Kenny charged with hitting and killing a 20-year-old in Alice Springs with his car before fleeing the scene

Anthony James Kenny waited 11 days to get a judge in Alice Springs’ overcrowded courts to consider his bail application for drink driving charges.

Anthony Kenny also appeared in reporting by The Australian in a story highlighting issues in the Northern Territory’s justice system. Picture: Liam Mendes

Anthony James Kenny waited 11 days to get a judge in Alice Springs’ overcrowded courts to consider his bail application for drink-­driving charges.

Just weeks after he was finally out of remand, he allegedly made the disastrous mistake of getting back behind the wheel.

Now Mr Kenny faces alle­gations that he killed a man with his car and the prospect of a much longer time behind bars.

The 31-year-old has been accused of a fatal hit and run resulting in the death of a 20-year-old Indigenous man from the well-known Turner family in Alice Springs .

The alleged incident, which police say happened when Mr Kenny had no licence, comes in the wake of another car crash that led to rioting and “payback” and has in turn led to the first significant non-Covid curfew in an Australian town in decades.

As tensions spiral between families in Alice Springs, it is understood Mr Kenny’s family members visited the alleged victim’s relatives after the arrest. One relative of the accused said Mr Kenny’s family had believed there would be payback.

“The family then said no, there’s no payback,” they told The Weekend Australian.

“It’s bad for everyone, really. Our family is feeling very bad for the family of the young bloke.”

Police will allege that in the early hours of Sunday morning, the 20-year-old victim was found unresponsive after being hit by Mr Kenny’s black Ford Ranger.

It is alleged Mr Kenny fled the scene without calling emergency services. The victim was taken to Alice Springs Hospital, where he was declared dead.

Police are treating the death as a death in custody.

“Prior to the incident, the (deceased) male was in contact with police regarding a separate matter,” a police spokesman said.

“Consequently, on behalf of the Northern Territory Coroner, the incident is now being investigated as a death in custody.”

Police documents say the incident is possibly mental health-­related.

Mr Kenny was not charged with any drink-driving related offences. On Tuesday, he made no application for bail and was remanded into custody.

He had appeared in reporting by The Australian in stories highlighting issues in the NT’s justice system, partly fuelled by a mass exodus of staff from the country’s largest Indigenous legal service, the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency.

Mr Kenny, a full-time employee of Territory Housing, was left in a cell for 11 days while he waited to have his bail application heard in the Territory’s overwhelmed and under-resourced justice system.

His time in custody was described by judge Carly Ingles as a “travesty and a human rights issue of significant proportion”, and provided a glimpse of the shocking state of the court system in the Territory, especially in Alice Springs.

The Weekend Australian spent three weeks inside the court system, observing various courtrooms and witnessing dozens of cases where Indigenous Australians were forced to self-represent because of the staff shortage.

One Alice Springs lawyer ­recalled a day at the end of last year when the cells beneath the court were “like Mississippi in the 70s”.

“They were all screaming ‘lawyer, lawyer, lawyer’,” said the lawyer, who confessed to having broken down and cried.

Those on the ground fear the system is on the brink of ­collapse, not just because of a ­severe shortage of permanent staff but also because the ­Territory’s crime crisis is pushing so many people into the justice system.