Kumanjayi Haywood domestic violence inquest hears several pleas for help before fatal assault

The NT coroner has questioned the communication between triple-0 responders and police on the ground after calls for help from a domestic violence victim took almost 12 hours to respond to.

NT Coroner Elisabeth Armitage has questioned why police weren’t immediately tasked to help a victim of domestic violence after several pleas for help to triple-0 were not actioned until the following afternoon.

Counsel assisting the coroner Peggy Dwyer played the triple-0 calls as the coronial inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Haywood resumed in Alice Springs Local Court on Thursday.

The 34-year-old died in hospital two days after her abuser, Kumanjayi Dixon, set fire to a toilet she was sheltering inside at Hidden Valley Camp in November 2021.

She is one of four Aboriginal women killed at the hands of their partners whose deaths are being examined in a landmark, six-month long coronial investigation into domestic violence in the Territory.

In a call about 12am on September 28, just days before her death, Ms Haywood told the triple-0 responder from a telephone box in Papunya her boyfriend was trying to kill her and she “would be dead in a minute”.

In the calls, she alleged Kumanjayi Dixon was drunk and she needed police assistance.

“He’s trying to kill me with broken glass,” she said between audible sobs.

“He’s at the house.

“Please just help me.”

Territory Coroner Elisabeth Armitage is heading the landmark inquest into domestic violence. Picture: Glenn Campbell

Dr Dwyer told the court the late-night phone call was one of five made by Ms Haywood and two from Ms Haywood’s mother to triple-0 later that night.

The calls were made at 12.32am, 12.40am, 12.53am, 1.17am, 1.25am, 1.37am and 2.13am, with police not attending until 12.46pm the next day.

In one of the later calls, Ms Haywood tells the responder Dixon had stabbed her in the leg multiple times in 2017.

“I’m just thinking he might do that again,” she said.

“He went to jail for 18 months, that’s not f***ing good.

“He should have got more than that for doing that to me.”

The triple-0 responder then asks Ms Haywood: “How come you stayed there?”

Ms Haywood responds: “I don’t know, love is love, you know?”

Ms Armitage questioned the impact of the responders question on domestic violence victims.

Dr Dwyer responded evidence around that question would be presented later in the day.

On the day of the fire, Ms Haywood and Dixon were drinking at Hidden Valley Camp outside Alice Springs. Picture: Kevin Farmer

In the final call to triple-0, where Ms Haywood again says Dixon is trying to kill her, the triple-0 responder says given she had managed to get out of her house and call police multiple times they would have to decide whether to call police from Papunya to the incident.

“I’ve never been out to Haasts-Bluff but is there somewhere where you could just go sit down on the veranda where you’re away from the house until the morning and have a bit of a camp out?” he says.

“Because at the moment nothings happening right now, you’ve been calling us for at least an hour, and he’s not coming to find you, he’s probably falling asleep.

“We’re definitely going to get the Papunya police to come and follow up with you in the morning.

“But if he hasn’t come looking for you all this time that you’ve been making these phone calls he’s not likely to.”

Ms Armitage questioned Papunya Constable Robert Stephenson, who attended the incident the following afternoon, if he believed Ms Haywood would have been safe “camping out” as suggested.

He responded that he did not believe so.

Constable Stephenson had just started in the position four days before the incident after graduating from the police academy in Darwin.

He said the fact that police had not been called out to he job overnight and it had been deemed as a job that could “wait until the morning” was influential in the decision to not check on Ms Haywood until the afternoon of the 28th.

“That told me that she was or could’ve been in a safe location at the time,” he said.

Dr Dwyer asked if police would have acted sooner had they known Ms Haywood was at a phone box in the vicinity of Dixon, knowing his history of violent assaults including the 2017 incident.

He said yes.

On November 5, 2021, Dixon began punching Ms Haywood, beating her with a piece of wood and striking her repeatedly with a chair.

She ran into a toilet and locked herself inside, refusing to open the door.

Dixon poured 20lt of petrol under the toilet door before sparking a lighter, causing a massive explosion.

Ms Haywood received burns to 90 per cent of her body and died in hospital two days later.

Dixon suffered burns to 70 per cent of his body and died on November 13, 2021.

The inquest continues on Friday.

Originally published as Kumanjayi Haywood domestic violence inquest hears several pleas for help before fatal assault