Australian woman found dead in Fiji

The mother of three was found dead in her home, and police have identified the main suspect.

Jennifer Downes was found dead in Fiji. Picture: Supplied

An Australian humanitarian worker based in Fiji has been found dead in her family home in Suva, with local police identifying her husband as the main suspect.

Jennifer Downes’ body was found on Monday at her home in the Suva suburb where most of the city’s expat workers reside. She had three children, all under the age of five, and it’s understood she was estranged from her husband, Henri Lusaka John, at the time of her death.

Her father travelled to Fiji from Australia yesterday to collect the children.

Mr John was tonight under police guard in Suva’s Colonial War Memorial Hospital. Local police told The Australian he is their main suspect, as details of her death began to circulate in the expatriate and humanitarian communities across Australia and Fiji.

Ms Downes, was a World Food Program logistics expert with the United Nations, who spent ten years bringing her skills to some of the Pacific’s most remote communities.

“You have to live and breathe it. You have to believe in it”, she said in an interview published by the World Food Program last year.

She said raising three very young children “has only enhanced my logistics capacities”.

She met Mr Lusaka while working in the Democratic Republic of Congo, his home country, and they are thought to have worked and lived together in Vanuatu and Australia, where their children were born. Ms Downes worked for Oxfam as a security and logistics expert in Australia and overseas in 2016 and 2017 before the family moved to Fiji.

Police carry Jennifer Downes' body from a house in Suva. Picture: Fiji Sun

Described as good-humoured with a zest for her role as a senior aid worker, Ms Downes was based in Fiji but worked across 11 Pacific countries on disaster preparedness.

“Anyone can be a logistician but not everyone can do the job well. Being a good logistician comes from having a love of it. Well that, and being able to see into the future.”

Ms Downes said she had once wanted to be a diplomat, “but soon realised I wasn’t very diplomatic.” She worked in logistics for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, and then moved into the humanitarian sector.

“You get to play a role in delivering important cargo to the middle of the jungle in DRC, or be part of the team getting lifesaving medicine to those who need it most. In the Pacific, I’m working with some amazing people striving towards the same goal as me,” she said of her job last year.

Foreign Minister and Minister for Women Marise Payne said yesterday she was deeply saddened by the death of Ms Downes. “My deepest sympathies go out to Jennifer’s loved ones,” she said.

“The Australian government has zero tolerance for violence against women and their children, both at home and abroad.”