Indigenous drug and alcohol workers made three attempts to find Jayden Bennell on the afternoon he died in custody, a coronial inquest has heard.
Bennell, a 20-year-old Bibbulmun Noongar man, attended the Pathways rehabilitation program twice a week for five weeks, including attending on the morning of the day he died – 6 March 2013.
But when the afternoon session started at 1.30pm on that day Bennell was not there, the program’s lead facilitator Benjamin Moodie said.
Two hours later he was found hanged in an unlocked cleaning storage room opposite his cell in unit 5 of Perth’s Casuarina maximum security prison.
Moodie told a coronial inquest at Perth magistrates court on Wednesday that it was not unusual for some people to be a few minutes late to the program but it was unusual for Bennell not to attend, as he was “very committed”.
He said he was “very shocked” when he later heard Bennell had died and became emotional describing a conversation he had had with Bennell that morning, when he had spoken about his plans once he got parole.
“The part that stands out to me the most is him talking about the impact that his crimes had on his family and that he would like to cook dinner for his mother when he is released,” Moodie said.
Moodie told the court that he approached the control room in the centre of the prison’s education area three times to ask the guards to look for Bennell: once at 1.35pm, then again 20 minutes later and a third time about 2.30pm. He said he spoke to the same guard each time and was told they would call Bennell’s unit, and at one stage was told Bennell was on his way.
He said it was not unusual to have to make one request to the guards to chase up late prisoners but he became worried when Bennell was still missing after the third call. His co-worker, Russell Butler, who confirmed they had made three requests to find him, said he was worried Bennell would ruin his chances of parole.
Both said they had a good rapport with Bennell, who they described as a “respectful”, good kid, and felt they knew him well. Neither noticed any changes in his demeanour that morning. If they had, they said, they would have alerted the prison’s mental health service and offered him support. Butler said he was “devastated” when he heard of his death.
According to prison records previously discussed in the inquest, the last sign of Bennell alive was an attempt to telephone his brother at 1.26pm. The call didn’t go through and the autopsy report puts Bennell’s time of death as anywhere between then and his discovery in the storage cupboard at 3.45pm.
Andrew Hall, a prison guard who was working in the education centre control room, said he did not recall being asked to put in a call to unit 5 to find Bennell but that it was possible, if he was only asked once and someone else took the other two requests, that he would have forgotten.
All three witnesses were asked about the incident for the first time this year, three years after Bennell died.
Coroner Sarah Linton said she was inclined to believe Moodie and Butler’s evidence even though none of the six prison guards who have spoken at the inquest specifically mentioned being asked to find Bennell before the 3.15pm muster.
“I can’t see that Mr Moodie or Mr Butler would be wrong in the sense that it was something that would be significant to them in a way that it’s not significant to the other prison officers,” Linton said.
The inquest also heard from the head of the prison’s ligature minimisation program, Andrew Daniels, who said there were at least as many hanging points in Bennell’s cell as in the storage room where he died, despite the prison having spent $5m on ligature minimisation in the years leading up to Bennell’s death. Determining which cells would be made safer, he said, depended on the available budget.
He also said he was not familiar with the recommendations of the 1998-1991 royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, which dealt extensively with hanging points.
Daniels said it was “impractical to impossible” to minimise the hanging points in the storage closet, saying “it is a room that probably should not have been open.”
However he agreed with a suggestion from David Leigh, counsel for the department of corrective services, that Bennell could have killed himself just as easily in his cell.
“Once the cell is sealed it’s about as invisible and sealed off as the cleaning closet,” Leigh said.
The inquest continues.
• Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia1300 78 99 78
