Feuding clan hushed as police shooting victim buried

The feuding family of Joyce Clarke fell silent at Carnarvon Cemetery as they bid the 29-year-old mother farewell.

Joyce Clarke.

In the final moments before her coffin was lowered into the ground, the feuding family of Joyce Clarke fell silent at Carnarvon Cemetery as they bid the 29-year-old mother farewell.

There were even small words of praise for WA Police, who helped calm down a large crowd of 400-500 people that had come in from the towns where Ms Clarke was born, raised by relatives or simply travelled through — Perth, Meekatharra, Geraldton and her final resting place of Carnarvon.

Some relatives who had wanted her buried in the place she was born made their feelings known.

“The police, to their credit, calmed things down and they deserve to have that said,” says close family friend Gerry Georgatos, who helped organise for dozens of mourners to travel to the funeral.

It was a tiny moment of eased hostility between the police and the family of Ms Clarke, who was shot fatally in the stomach by a police officer about 6.15pm on September 17 in the suburb of Karloo in Geraldton.

Mr Georgatos said the family found it strange that two months later they cannot yet know the name of the officer who shot her.

He said it was even stranger in light of the recent shooting at Yuendumu, where Northern ­Territory constable Zach Rolfe’s name was almost immediately disclosed; he has been charged with the murder of Aboriginal teenager Kumanjayi Walker.

“Joyce’s parent Lesley-Anne Jones, who raised her and is raising Joyce’s seven-year-old son, says ‘Who killed my daughter?’

“It’s compounding the trauma to not know,” said Mr Georgatos.

The officer involved in her death was stood down.

A police investigation is still under way.

It was alleged that Ms Clarke had lunged with a knife at police officers called to a disturbance outside a house on the night.