A police sergeant who allegedly told Ms Dhu that he thought she was “a fucking junkie” who was “faking it” was told she had been sick in her cell six hours before she died, a coronial inquest has heard.
Sergeant Rick Bond was the supervisor at the South Hedland police station on 4 August 2014, when Dhu, who had been in custody for two days, was taken to hospital for the third and final time.
Bond is scheduled as the second-last witness at the inquest into Dhu’s death and will give evidence on Wednesday.
At the Perth magistrates court on Tuesday, detective senior constable Lee Burgess said he had spoken to Dhu through the cell door about 7.35am on 4 August after going to the lock-up to have a look at another detainee.
By 1.39pm, Dhu had been declared dead at Hedland Health Campus. She had succumbed to septicemia and pneumonia, which began as an infection centred around a rib broken a few months earlier.
Burgess is the husband of senior constable Shelly Burgess and was summonsed to give evidence only on Monday, after making a statement to the coroner on Sunday.
Shelly Burgess told the court on Monday she had believed Dhu was exaggerating her illness up until the point an emergency department nurse at Hedland Health Campus told her Dhu “was crashing”.
She said this was because Bond had told her Dhu was “a junkie coming off drugs” who was “faking” that she couldn’t walk. She also told the court she dropped Dhu while trying to pull her into a sitting position in the cells but did not check to see if she had injured her head, and that she overheard Bond whisper in Dhu’s ear: “You are a fucking junkie … you will fucking sit this out. We will take you to hospital but you are faking it.”
Lee Burgess, who worked the same shift as his wife but did not see her until after Dhu’s death, was not asked to comment on her evidence.
The detainee he had gone to the cells to see was Dhu’s partner, 41-year-old Dion Ruffin.
Ruffin and the 22-year-old Yamatji woman, whose first name is not used for cultural reasons, were arrested together for different charges about 5pm on 2 August 2015.
Burgess said he went to see Ruffin because he had been told he matched the description of a person of interest in an investigation he was working on, but that once he saw Ruffin he realised he was not that person.
On his way out of the cell area, Dhu, who was on the mattress in the cell, said “sir” thorough the cell window, Burgess said.
He stopped and spoke to her, and said she “said something like, ‘I feel sick or I have been sick.’”
Burgess said he noticed a polystyrene cup on the floor of the cell but did not see any liquid. Security footage of the cell, shown to the court earlier in the inquest, showed Dhu apparently vomiting into the cup several times about 11am that day.
Burgess said he told her he would go and tell the sergeant and then went to see Bond, telling him: “The female in the cells tells me she feels sick or she has been sick.”
He then made a note of that conversation in his police notebook, an entry he said he made before 9.30am that day.
Bond’s lawyer, Peter Lochore, did not question Lee Burgess.
The inquest is expected to finish on Thursday.
