Police were not wearing bodycams during Queensland shooting

Queensland’s Police Service has confirmed that specialist officers were not wearing body-worn cameras when they stormed a north Queensland home and shot and killed an Aboriginal man.

Indigenous protesters march through the streets of Mareeba in response to a police shooting on Saturday. Picture: Peter Carruthers

Queensland’s Police Service has confirmed that specialist officers were not wearing standard issue body-worn cameras when they stormed a north Queensland residence on Saturday and shot and killed an Aboriginal man.

Aubrey Donahue, 28, had held police at bay for four hours in Mareeba, west of Cairns and was allegedly holding his partner hostage and threatening self-harm.

In a statement, police said officers from the Special Emergency Response Team (SERT) rushed into the home after hearing Donahue’s partner screaming for help and shot him as he allegedly brandished a knife.

His death has led to racial tensions in the small town and a march of several hundred people on Monday outside the local police station where a police car was damaged.

Several of Donahue’s extended family disputed initial police claims that he lunged at officers with a knife, saying he was instead holding a mobile phone when he was shot at least three times.

But in the statement, police said Donahue was holding a knife when he was killed. He died at the scene.

“Preliminary investigations indicate a female person was screaming for help, causing the police to immediately respond and the man presented a knife in close proximity to officers resulting in the man being shot by specialist police,’’ the statement said.

Police confirmed that the SERT team was not wearing body-worn cameras and there is no footage of the shooting.

Other police officers involved in the siege were wearing body-worn cameras.

“Queensland Police can confirm there is no BWC vision available of the actual shooting of the male by police,’’ the statement said. “All other available BWC will be reviewed as part of the investigation.

“Inherent in any police interaction with the community, is the underlying risk that a situation may be immediately volatile, or rapidly escalate to a violent confrontation to which the officer must quickly respond.”

It is standard issue for general duty Queensland police officers to wear body-worn cameras, which are required to be activated during arrests and confrontations with alleged offenders.

But sources told The Australian that SERT officers have resisted wearing the cameras.

The death of the Aboriginal man follows revelations by The Australian earlier this month that another Aboriginal man died after police applied a controversial stranglehold on him as he resisted arrest in Toowoomba in October, 2021.

At the time, police said that Steven Nixon-McKellar, 28, had had a “medical episode” during a struggle with police and lost consciousness and died.

But it was revealed that an autopsy found Nixon-McKellar suffered a cardiac arrest when officers used an officially-endorsed stranglehold – known as a Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint – on him.