Miss Dhu inquest: A broken rib, howls of pain, and then death

In a remote watch house in ­WA’s north a young Aboriginal woman is howling in pain as a policewoman tells her to breathe deeply.

Miss Dhu's grandmother Carol Roe, who raised her and Miss Dhu's mother Della Roe (Miss Dhu died in a Pilbara lockup in August last year) attend the first day of her coronial inquest today at the Central Law Courts, Perth, with a smoking ceremony outside the court before the start of the inquest.

In a remote watch house in ­Western Australia’s north a young Aboriginal woman is howling in pain as a policewoman sits with her and tells her to breathe deeply.

“There’s not much you can do with a broken rib,” the officer tells the 22-year-old.

The woman known for cultural reasons as Miss Dhu was suffering much more than a cracked rib when the CCTV footage was ­recorded in the charge room of South Hedland police station on August 2 last year. Septic shock was setting in.

“Try to take calm breaths,” the officer tells her. “You are not helping yourself.”

On the first day of a coronial inquest in Perth yesterday, the court heard claims that even as she collapsed and died, police told a nurse she was “faking it”.

The court watched more than 20 minutes of footage of Miss Dhu crying in pain at the lockup on the night she was arrested for unpaid fines in South Hedland, the iron ore town 1700km from Perth. She moaned and whimpered “help me” and “it hurts”. Some in the packed public gallery yesterday began to cry. Guards handed out tissues. Miss Dhu’s ­father Robert left the room. Her mother Della Roe and her grandmother Carol Roe, the formidable matriarch driving reforms of the state’s justice system, stayed.

Miss Dhu was declared dead at Hedland Health Campus, 900m from the lockup where she had been held for three days, on August 4 last year.

She was a healthy child and a bubbly young adult. But a year before she died Miss Dhu started a relationship with a man her family says beat her: Deon Ruffin. He broke her ribs, her father ­alleged.

An autopsy was inconclusive but toxicology results helped ­forensic pathologist Jodi White determine the cause of death as staphylococcal septicaemia and pneumonia in a woman with osteomyelitis (a bone infection) complicating a rib ­fracture.

Ilona O’Brien, counsel ­assisting coroner Ros Fogliani, said that on the night of August 2, constables Jamie Buck and Hafiz Shaw took Miss Dhu to the hospital emergency department where doctor Anne Lang “recorded that a police officer told her that Miss Dhu had been taken into police custody that evening and was reported to be ‘pain-free initially’ and complained of right rib pain once she was informed she would have to spend the night in police detention”.

Miss Dhu was hyper­ventilating but her examination was normal, leading to a recording of “behavioural gain”. The final diagnosis for Miss Dhu was “behavioural issues”, Ms O’Brien told the court.

Miss Dhu was returned to her cell. The following day she was brought back to the hospital, grunting and dehydrated with a pulse rate of 126.

She was crying when doctor Vafa Naderi saw her. He described her as “a difficult patient to assess” and noted she had taken drugs in the past.

An ultrasound did not pick up anything abnormal and Dr Naderi’s impression was that Miss Dhu was withdrawing from drugs or had behavioural issues.

“Unbeknownst to those who were caring for her, by the time of her second presentation, Miss Dhu was in the process of dying from septicaemia and pneum­onia,” Ms O’Brien told the court.

“By the morning of 4 August 2014, Miss Dhu’s clinical state rapidly worsened and although it was not appreciated by the police officers involved, some of whom believed that Miss Dhu was feigning her illness, she was in an advanced state of septic shock and only hours from death.”

On the morning of August 4, she was still complaining of pain. But Sergeant Rick Bond said she was fit to be in custody. CCTV footage shows her vomiting or retching several times. When she said her hands were blue, Sargeant Bond said he did not see discolouration.

She then fell and hit her head on concrete three times.

By 12.14pm Sergeant Bond decided she should again go to hospital but he felt it was not urgent. He wrote in the custody system that Miss Dhu “appears to be suffering withdrawals from drug use and is not coping well with being in custody”.

By this time Miss Dhu could not walk. Senior Constable Burgess and Constable Matier dragged and carried her in handcuffs. At the hospital they put her in a wheelchair. Ms O’Brien said Senior Constable Burgess believed that Miss Dhu was “pretending to faint”. “Nurse (Caroline) Jones recalls that the police officers reported to her that Miss Dhu ‘was faking it’,” Ms O’Brien said.

Miss Dhu had no pulse and, after 53 minutes of attempted resuscitation, was declared dead. The inquest continues.