Kelly Thompson’s parents have spoken of their relief that the state coroner recognised the contribution of Victoria police shortcomings to their daughter’s death.
Thompson, 43, was murdered by her former partner, Wayne Wood, in February 2014 when he broke into her house through a toilet window and stabbed her in the chest. He then killed himself. The findings from the inquest into her death were handed down by Victorian coroner, Ian Gray, on Thursday morning.
Wendy and John Thompson were yet to digest the almost 80 pages of Gray’s findings about the death of their “strong, independent and loving” daughter but were pleased and overwhelmed by Gray’s summary to the court.
Gray said: “Whilst it is difficult to say what lengths Mr Wood would have undertaken in order to kill Ms Thompson, on balance, I find that Ms Thompson’s death was preventable.”
Police had missed several opportunities to ascertain and record the extent of the violence by Wood against Thompson, he said, adding that Thompson did “everything right” in trying to protect herself from him.
Overcome by emotion, Wendy Thompson struggled to put her feelings into words.
“The fact that he said Kelly’s death was preventable was profound,” she told Guardian Australia. “We didn’t expect him to say that as directly as he did. I’m really ... my whole mind is scattered.
“The fact that Judge Gray has acknowledged so many of the failures from the police and the missed opportunities to have been able to perhaps stop Wayne ... We’ve always believed that if there had have been intervention or consequences for Wayne, he would never have accelerated to the point that he did.
“And that’s a belief held not only by us as a family but also by Wayne’s family.”
Wood’s parents, who live in Queensland, were not present as the findings were handed down on Thursday but had been in court at times during the inquest in June last year.
Wendy Thompson said Wood’s parents and family did not know that their son was violent, dangerous and aggressive.
“They didn’t do anything [wrong],” Wayne Thompson said. “They’ve lost a child, a brother. They didn’t expect it to happen.”
And, Wendy Thompson said, “they believe, as we do, that if police had’ve intervened and Wayne was given consequences, we wouldn’t be sitting here today.”
The shortcomings of the police were numerous, Gray found.
In the hours before Thompson was murdered, a neighbour rang police to say he saw Wood acting strangely outside Thompson’s home and suspected Wood was breaching an intervention order. The officer who received the call, Constable Sean Pringle, did not investigate and did not send a police van to the scene.
Gray said that while doing so may not have prevented Thompson’s death, Pringle should have called triple 0 and investigated further. When he gave evidence last year, Pringle said he was not given enough information by the neighbour upon which to act, a statement, Gray said on Thursday, with which he disagreed. However, Gray acknowledged that Pringle was honest, acting in good faith to properly triage the call and took his job seriously.
But long before Thompson’s death, Gray said, police had failed on several occasions to record the extend of Wood’s violence towards Thompson or use opportunities to intervene and ask questions.
One such occasion was when police attended to Wood and Thompson after neighbours found Thompson distressed and walking down a street while Wood pursued her. She told neighbours, “My partner tried to strangle me”, and urged them to call police.
But the officers who attended, Sr Constable John Whichello and Constable David Attard, did not record the fact that the neighbour told 000 that Wood had tried to strangle Thompson, Gray said. This was a “critical omission”, Gray found, and meant police referring to notes about Wood’s behaviour after future incidents may not have realised the seriousness of his behaviour. Strangulation was a strong indicator of future risk of family violence, he added.
In their evidence, Whichello and Attard said by the time they attended, neither Wood nor Thompson mentioned the strangulation, Wood was not acting violently and neither had any signs of injuries.
Gray found police should have also charged Wood when he breached an intervention order by attempting to add Thompson as a friend on Facebook. Gray added that Thompson had done everything she could to end the violence, including reporting breaches of intervention orders to police.
“An examination of the response of the Victorian family violence system has highlighted inadequacies in the response by police, particularly in respect of investigation standards,” Gray found.
The findings from Victoria’s royal commission into family violence, which the state government had fully adopted, would go a long way towards addressing the system failures, he said.
A senior solicitor from Shine lawyers, Paula Shelton, who represented the Thompson family throughout the inquest, described Gray’s finding that Thompson had done all that she could to stop Wood as significant.
“There are no happy endings at the coroner’s court,” she said.
“The important thing is we learn from the failures identified here today and that other families do not have to suffer. Kelly’s death and the death of Luke Batty [at the hands of his father] has galvanised political will and public opinion about this issue.
“Hopefully that will go a long way towards addressing the failures that we see.”
