Josh Warneke: Inquest hopes to open brief window

There are five minutes missing from Josh Warneke’s story. This brief window in the dead of night is when the 21-year-old labourer was killed walking along a Broome road.

Josh Warneke.

There are five minutes missing from Josh Warneke’s story.

This brief window in the dead of night is when the 21-year-old labourer was killed while trying to make his way home along Old Broome Road.

More than 14 years since a taxi driver swerved to avoid what turned out to be Warneke’s body, West Australian coroner Ros Fogliani has begun an inquest that could settle what happened.

Experts differ on whether he was hit in the head one or more times, causing him to fall on to the road, whether he was run over by a car while lying on that road, or whether both these things happened one after the other.

The inquest began on Monday in the Broome Court House on the far north Kimberley coast.

It is the inquiry that Warneke’s mother Ingrid Bishop has wanted since the homicide investigation was found to have been seriously flawed.

Police believed they had solved the case in 2012 after conducting three interviews with Gene Gibson, a then 18-year-old Aboriginal man from Australia’s most remote Aboriginal community of Kiwirrkurra.

Mr Gibson – who has a cognitive impairment, speaks almost exclusively in his first language of Pintupi and has a shaky grasp of English – was interviewed at length without a translator.

He served almost five years in prison over Warneke’s death before the WA court of appeal quashed his conviction. 

A Corruption and Crime Commission report found Mr Gibson’s treatment was indicative of a wider problem of police breaching the Criminal Investigations Act. One officer on the case, Detective Phillip Gazzone, told the CCC: “It was just a mess. It turned into a dog’s breakfast.”

On Monday, counsel assisting the coroner Rachael Young SC said in her opening address: “Given he has been acquitted, Mr Gibson will not be called as a witness.”

Ms Young said it was balmy and humid in Broome on the evening of February 25, 2010, when Warneke and three friends had Corona beers at his house in Roebuck Estate, about 3km from the centre of Broome. They caught a taxi to the Oasis Bar about 10.20pm.

Later, Warneke and friends walked to a nearby nightclub, the Bungalow Bar. They had a few more drinks and danced. The original group of four friends did not leave together. One left the bar by ambulance after being glassed in the back of the head.

At about 2.15am, Warneke left the bar on foot with workers from the Mangrove Resort whom he had met that night.

He stopped at McDonalds telling his acquaintances he wanted to get food, but he would meet them at the Mangrove Resort for a swim. He never made it there.

Ms Young said the last person known to have seen Warneke alive was Ryan Thompson, who did not know him but recognised him from earlier in the night. At 2.45am, Mr Thomspon saw Warneke “walking up Old Broome Road” towards home.

About 2.50am Broome taxi driver Jim McCall was travelling with three passengers from the McDonalds to Roebuck Estate when he saw what looked like a person lying on the side of the road. It was Warneke.

The coroner has set aside two weeks for the inquest.