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Palm Island resident Tiana Friday... held in police custody for an entire day, pregnant, in her nightgown and with no access to food. |
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LEX WOTTON TRIAL: Police held pregnant woman in custody for entire day in nightgown with no food, court told
ISSUE 164 - 16 Oct 2008
NATIONAL, October 9, 2008: Police searching for a videotape of the Palm Island riot entered the homes of at least three Palm Islanders without permission and held a pregnant 22-year-old Aboriginal woman in custody clad only in her nightgown for an entire day with no access to food, a Queensland court has heard.
Lex Wotton stands accused of rioting with destruction following the November 2004 Palm Island riot which saw the torching of the local police station, courthouse and police barracks.
The riot followed the death in custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee, and a pathologist's report which found the death was an accident after Mulrunji tripped up a step and fell onto a flat surface.
Mulrunji suffered contusions to his face and head, four broken ribs and a torn portal vein. His liver was almost “cleaved in two”.
In the Brisbane District Court yesterday, Tiana Friday, a Palm Island resident and the niece of Lex Wotton, took the stand.
The court heard that Ms Friday had given police a statement two days after the riot which implicated Mr Wotton on several fronts, including that he had directed someone to locate a full petrol drum shortly after the police station was torched.
But Ms Friday told the court she would have “said anything” to the police to be released from their custody, and that she felt intimidated by the officers and powerless to resist their demands.
Ms Friday came into custody of police because they believed she may have been in possession of a video tape which captured events leading up to and surrounding the riot.
Four officers arrived at her Palm Island home at around 9am on November 28, two days after the riot.
She told the court that Detective Sergeant Darren Robinson, the local detective on Palm Island, along with a second officer she didn't know, entered her flat. Her two children, aged six and four, were home at the time.
“I was still in my night dress and having my tea for the morning. He just walked in without permission,” Ms Friday told the court.
She was finally released from police custody around eight hours later, still in her nightdress, and having not been fed throughout the entire period. Ms Friday was four months pregnant at the time.
Her day-long saga began after she told police she did not have the tape.
“I told them it was most likely with the owner (of the video camera), who lived with my sister.”
Ms Friday told the court that she believed police would leave her alone if she gave them the address, which she did. But she was subsequently driven by police - still in her nightgown - to her sister's house.
She told the court she sat in the back of the vehicle between two officers, with two other police sitting in the front.
Defence senior counsel Clive Steirn asked Ms Friday if she felt frightened.
“Yes. I was frightened about what they were gonna do in my sister's house and frightened about what my sister was gonna do to me after they left.”
Ms Friday told the court that the four officers followed her into her sister's home, again uninvited, and then began a search of the premises, which lasted about half an hour but failed to locate the tape.
Ms Friday was driven to a second address, and the group was joined by another carload of police containing four or five officers.
The owner wasn't home, but his wife and young children were. Police entered the premises - again, Ms Friday said, without permission - and “started tipping everything up in the house”.
Clothes were strewn from drawers and tossed around the house, she said.
The search took about 40 minutes, before a friend of Ms Friday's - Hal Walsh - arrived at the home carrying the tape. He offered it to police, saying, “You don't need to rip my aunties' house apart. The tapes are here.”
Ms Friday said Det Sgt Robinson grabbed Mr Walsh and pushed him face first into the wall, using his hand to press against Mr Walsh's head, before he began yelling at Mr Walsh. Ms Friday said she became more frightened and fled to another part of the house.
“I didn't want to see that,” Ms Friday said.
She told the court the police then drove her back to the makeshift station - formerly the police barracks - where she remained for hours.
Ms Friday said she recalled very little from that point forward.
She confirmed she signed a four page statement which alleged, among other things that shortly after the police station was torched she had overhead her uncle Lex Wotton say that a petrol drum was empty and that someone should get another one.
Ms Friday told the court she was confused about whether or not she heard her uncle make those statements, or whether she had actually heard that “on the grapevine”.
“By the time I gave my statement I was confused on what I saw myself. I might be getting in confused with the big conversation that went on in my flat the night of the riot,” she said.
In relation to a part of her statement where she told police she saw Lex Wotton kicking at a gate to the police barracks, Ms Friday was asked if she stated that to police in order to expedite her release from custody.
“Yeah, probably. I'd have said anything.”
The court had earlier heard that Ms Friday was being medicated for depression for a year prior to the riot. She had fallen pregnant four months out from the riots and advised to stop taking her medication, which she did.
She said she suffered from anxiety attacks and was a heavy smoker of marijuana since the age of 14, but had quit when she fell pregnant.
The trial continues today, but will not sit on Friday. It will resume on Monday.
Detective Sergeant Robinson is expected to be called to give evidence later today.
 
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