If police and the family violence system had taken warnings of domestic violence seriously the murder of a woman by her ex-partner could have been prevented, a coroner has found.
Kelly Thompson, 43, was killed by her former partner Wayne Wood in February 2014 and Victorian coroner Ian Gray has pointed to several police oversights that meant serious threats to Thompson’s safety were not recognised or acted upon.
However, Gray also said that the blame for Thompson’s death, caused by stab wounds to her chest, lay solely with Wood, who Gray said “did not want the relationship to end and, once ended, did not want Ms Thompson to live her life”. Wood killed himself after murdering Thompson.
“What is apparent is that there was little self-reflection or understanding about how unacceptable his behaviour was, or the effect he was having on Ms Thompson’s life,” Gray said.
Gray said there had been several missed opportunities for police to charge Wood with intervention order breaches; to record the seriousness of those breaches, including an attempt to strangle Thompson; and to share that information with other family violence agencies.
Gray identified as central to his investigation a phone call made by Norman Paskin, a neighbour of Thompson’s, to police in the hours before her death. During that phone call Paskin told Const Sean Pringle that Wood was acting strangely outside Thompson’s home, and that he suspected Wood was breaching an intervention order.
Paskin also told Pringle that he suspected an intervention order was in place because he had previously seen police escorting Wood to the property to collect his belongings. But Pringle did not check to determine if an intervention order was in place and did not send police to Thompson’s house to check on the situation.
Instead, Gray said, Pringle told Paskin: “Can you do me a massive favour pal and keep an eye on the address? If you hear any yelling or screaming coming from the address I’ll send a van around to have a look.”
“Constable Pringle should have responded to Mr Paskin’s call by arranging for the despatch of police assistance or referring the call to triple 0 for this purpose,” Gray said. Despite Pringle’s role as a probationary constable with limited supervision and inadequate training, Gray said he found Pringle’s actions that night “fell short” regardless.
“Sadly, it is likely that even if Mr Paskin’s call had been responded to appropriately, Ms Thompson would not have been reached in time,” Gray found.
Pringle gave evidence that he did not have enough information to act or send out a police van. The details Ron the phone call were too vague, he said.
Gray found Paskin to be an “honest and reliable” witness, and said that he favoured his account of the phone call over Pringle’s.
However, he said there were other missed opportunities by police in the lead up to Thompson’s death to conduct a proper risk assessment and charge Wood with serious intervention order breaches.
Another neighbour of Thompson, Steven Hall, described during the inquest last year how in the weeks before her death, he found her distressed and walking down a street while Wood pursued her. She told Hall: “my partner tried to strangle me”.
At this point Wood turned up, driving his car on to the nature strip, wedging Thompson between both of their cars, Hall said. As Hall tried to pacify Wood, Thompson whispered to Hall’s wife, who was sitting in the passenger side of the car, to call the police, Gray said.
But Sen Const John Whichello and Const David Attard, who responded to the incident, did not record the fact that Wood had tried to strangle Thompson, Gray said. This was a “critical omission,” Gray found, and meant police referring to notes about Woods behaviour after future incidents may not have realised the seriousness of his behaviour.
Gray said Wood should also have been charged when he sent Thompson a Facebook friend request after an intervention order had been issued barring him from contacting her.
He also said Thompson had done “everything right” in trying to protect herself against Wood. She had followed the advice of family violence services, taken out an intervention order against him and reported intervention order breaches to police.
Whichello gave evidence to the coroner last year that when he attended the scene, Thompson “didn’t have any marks on her or anything”. In his evidence, Attard said Wood “wasn’t violent towards us at all and he didn’t seem violent towards her”.
Gray said that many of the findings from Victoria’s first royal commission into family violence, handed down by Justice Marcia Neave earlier this month and adoped in full by the Victorian government, had addressed the inadequacies of the response by Victoria police to family violence incidents and poor information sharing between police and courts. Gray referred to many of these recommendations in his findings.
However, he made some additional recommendations, including that calls to police stations about family violence matters be recorded, and referred to triple 0 when necessary.
