A 49-year-old man has been charged with murdering his sister in a domestic dispute over the weekend.
Northern Territory police allege the man, whose name has not been released, struck the 47-year-old woman with a “wooden implement” at a house in the Aboriginal community of Yirrkala, in north-east Arnhem land on Friday night. Police and paramedics from nearby Nhulunbuy responded to reports of a collapsed woman at around 8.30pm, but she was declared dead at the residence.
It is understood other people in the house witnessed the alleged attack, and the man has been charged and transferred to Darwin before his appearance in the city magistrate’s court this week.
It is believed the siblings shared a residence.
The small community near the town of Nhulunbuy is in shock at the incident, Guardian Australia was told. The East Arnhem regional council has for several years operated a community night patrol service, which drives around the community for several hours on five nights of the week, assisting people in potentially dangerous situations.
The main emphasis of the highly-valued and federally funded program is to get people to a safe environment, with a focus on youth and women, a spokeswoman for the council said.
While it frequently picked up people who were in the street or public areas, team members could also be called to residences to respond to domestic incidents, she said.
The woman’s death is estimated to be the 25th due to domestic or family violence so far this year. Indigenous women are 34 times more likely to be hospitalised due to domestic and family violence than non-Indigenous women.
The Northern Territory has the highest rate of domestic violence in Australia. Former NT police commissioner John McRoberts told Guardian Australia in November that 56% of homicides were domestic homicides.
However, across the NT domestic violence-related assaults dropped by 9.5% in the year to 31 July.
According to the Counting Dead Women project by the anti-sexism group Destroy the Joint, which counts all female victims of violence regardless of the circumstances, at least 66 women have died in 2015.
Charlie King, a Darwin-based ABC broadcaster and anti-violence campaigner, said the work against family violence “never ends, and never gets easier”.
“We’ve done a lot about raising awareness but we need to drill down a little deeper and start to develop really strong relationships with those communities,” he said.
King, whose No More campaign works with sporting groups to foster anti-violence messages, said they were working with police because officers were based on the ground in remote communities.
He said police used not to have a great relationship with remote communities, but it was improving. “We got a chance to talk the other day to new recruits and talked about how much easier it is to work with people if people get on with you,” said King.
The woman’s death occurred on the same weekend as the NT police and No More campaign’s White Ribbon fun run to raise awareness about family violence.
