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Police admit: we were following TJ

By LORNA KNOWLES Court Reporter

6 July 2004 - For five months police have insisted they had nothing to do with the horrific death of Aboriginal teenager Thomas "TJ" Hickey.

Yesterday they admitted officers in a caged truck had been "following him" moments before the 17-year-old lost control of his bicycle and became impaled on a fence on February 14.

Thomas's death the following morning sparked a riot in Redfern later that day in which 40 police officers were pelted with rocks and Molotov cocktails over nine hours of violence.

The officer in charge of the investigation yesterday told an inquest at Glebe Coroner's Court that a police patrol truck mounted the kerb at the end of Renwick St and drove behind Thomas through parkland, then stopped at a set of gates.

Detective Senior Constable Michael Kyneur said Thomas continued through the gates, across Phillip St, Redfern, and cycled up a driveway, where he lost control on a left-hand bend and became impaled on a fence.

Sen-Constable Kyneur said the police truck following Thomas was not involved in a pursuit.

He said witness Thomas Connah saw a police paddywagon with its lights flashing following Hickey.

"Thomas Connah, he saw the police vehicle travelling down the path?" Hickey family's counsel John Stratton asked.

"Yes," Sen-Constable Kyneur said.

He said if police used lights while following Thomas they may have been warning him they were on the path or wanted to see where he was going.

"They were travelling on a pathway, not a roadway," he said before rejecting that the paddywagon's blue lights had been flashing.

"They [the lights] may have been a warning to anyone on that pathway."

He said the NSW Police safe driving policy prohibited police pursuits with caged trucks and said a pursuit was defined as when police activated lights and/or their sirens to signal a person to stop. They are also required to notify police radio of their position. Sen-Constable Kyneur said the truck did neither.

Elizabeth Fullerton SC, counsel assisting the coroner John Abernethy, said Thomas died at about 1.20am on February 15 from "penetrating injuries" to his neck and chest.

Ms Fullerton said Thomas underwent 8½ hours of surgery to locate and stem multiple sites of internal bleeding at the Sydney Children's Hospital, Randwick.

The operation was unsuccesful and Thomas's family agreed to have his heart and lung machine switched off.

On the day of the accident Redfern police were hunting for a bagsnatch suspect near Redfern railway station.

That morning, Thomas rode from his home in Douglas St, Waterloo, to see his mother Gail Hickey in the Block in Redfern. On his way home, officers in two police caged trucks noted Thomas going in a parallel direction along Renwick St and Cope St.

Ms Fullerton said the two trucks were not within sight or radio contact of each other at the time.

Police in caged truck "Redfern 16" saw Hickey ride in front of them near where Turner and Cope streets meet.

Those in caged truck "Redfern 17" saw Thomas ride across the car park between Cope St and Renwick St.

Constable Michael Hollingsworth and Constable Maree Reynolds, in Redfern 16, followed Thomas down Renwick St to a dead end, where they mounted the gutter and went down a footpath, adjacent to parkland, the inquest heard.

Ms Fullerton said Const Hollingsworth and Const Reynolds had given conflicting accounts of when they saw Hickey, why they followed him and how far they followed him.

The inquest continues.

Source: Daily Telegraph

Coroner's inquest into death of TJ Hickey

5 July 2004

Reporter: Michael Vincent

TONY EASTLEY: The death of Thomas "TJ" Hickey sparked a nine-hour riot in the Sydney suburb of Redfern in February. Today a coroner's inquest will hopefully determine how and why he died.

Police have maintained they were not chasing the 17-year-old in the final moments before he suffered a fatal accident on his bicycle.

A warning: Michael Vincent's report contains language that some listeners may find offensive.

MICHAEL VINCENT: Up to a dozen members of TJ Hickey's family, including his grandfather, are coming to Sydney from his hometown of Walgett in Northern New South Wales for the inquest.

AM understands TJ's Uncle Roy will be a witness. He was one of the last people to see the young man before his fatal crash, as TJ hurtled across the road from one laneway into another, his knees up to his ears, pedalling his BMX at high speed.

Uncle Roy and a friend saw a police car pull up to a fence at the end of that first laneway soon after. This is a crucial moment. The question of whether the police were chasing him is the key contention of the Hickey family.

AM understands the evidence of the officers in that car, written in their notebooks, provided in statements and official interviews, their radio calls on the night and even a enactment of that event, will be dissected for inconsistencies at the inquest.

Police have always maintained they were not chasing TJ but looking for a bag snatcher who did not match TJ's description.

Meanwhile the actions of police officer in a second car are also expected to be questioned. They were also searching for the bag snatcher and were the first to find TJ impaled on a metal fence, around the corner of the second laneway.

AM understands the brakes of TJ's bicycle did not work. He was travelling fast when he turned the corner and had an accident. One, possibly two bars of the metal fence punctured his neck.

As local resident, Miguez, told the BBC.

MIGUEZ: I saw the boy, sticking right in the neck here, like that.

MICHAEL VINCENT: Miguez says police lifted TJ of the fence, applied pressure to his wounds while the teenager was kicking and screaming. Meguez says TJ soon went quiet and an ambulance arrived 5 to 10 minutes later. The 17-year-old died in hospital in the early hours of the next day, Sunday the 15th of February.

Other questions expected to be answered at the Coronial inquest are whether police should have lifted him off the metal bars, or whether waiting for him to be cut off may have stemmed his blood loss. The time it took the ambulance to arrive will also be questioned.

Meanwhile, AM understands the family of TJ no longer believe he was rammed from behind as his mother Gail told AM the morning after the riot.

GAIL HICKEY: How's he going… his bike… how's he going to get off his bike onto that fence? These dogs, I bet you, done it.

MICHAEL VINCENT: You believe that the police were…

GAIL HICKEY: I believe it; the police f***ing killed my son. The police car rammed into my son's bike. I don't believe there's no other way that he got there. I believe the bike had been hit by a car.

MICHAEL VINCENT: Passions still remain strong in Redfern over the death of the teenager and some have said they won't accept the finding from the inquest, which doesn't hold police responsible.

TONY EASTLEY: Michael Vincent reporting.

Source: ABC

TJ truth surrounded by police

By Louise Milligan

July 10, 2004 - Huddled at computer terminals at Redfern police station, four cops prepared to write statements about the events leading to the gruesome death of an Aboriginal teenager.

Three sat together in one room, the fourth nearby. Only they know what they told each other, what understandings they may or may not have formed.

But their fateful decision to discuss the statements, and the details they left out, have rocked the coronial inquest into the death that sparked Sydney's furious Redfern riot of February 15. It could embarrass everyone down from NSW Premier Bob Carr, including his Police Commissioner Ken Moroney, who publicly backed the Redfern police and made clear their belief that officers did not chase Thomas "TJ" Hickey.

Staring at the computer screen on Saturday, February 14, Constable Ruth Rocha, 23, with less than two years on the force, was distressed. She had just seen what she first thought was a T-shirt hanging on metal fence turn out to be a 17-year-old boy, impaled through the neck and bleeding heavily.

It was TJ, the same boy she saw pedalling furiously through a carpark moments earlier as she and her partner, Constable Allan Rimell, 27, patrolled the streets of the inner-Sydney Aboriginal heartland of Redfern looking for a violent bag-snatcher.

TJ was the same bum-fluffed youth who colleagues had arrested before. His picture was on the wall in the meals room with other profiles of local "persons of notoriety" and had been updated just three days earlier. But he hadn't snatched the bag.

At the Prince of Wales Children's Hospital in Randwick where TJ was rushed to, Rocha learned TJ's family was already suspicious that police, including her fiance, Constable Mick Hollingsworth, 32, had chased the boy to his death with his partner Maree Reynolds, 26.

"At one point he convulsed and next thing I know he's just hanging from his shirt -- that's when we grabbed him and put him on the ground," a teary Rocha said later that day as she described the scene to investigating officers.

"Thomas ... he was struggling so much it took four of us to hold him down," she said shakily in the videotaped statement played to the coronial inquest into TJ's death at the Glebe Coroners Court in Sydney this week.

The Bureau of Meteorology had Sydney's temperature at a muggy 27C on February 14, but in Redfern it seemed hotter as tempers began to fray.

The rumour mill at the notorious "Block" in Eveleigh Street began to churn with the news TJ was fighting for his life on the operating table. Posters would be plastered, molotov cocktails concocted and bricks collected as the Block prepared for riot.

Until the inquest, police came out of the riot looking pretty good. Images of them facing youths throwing bottles and rocks couldn't help but evoke public sympathy. Forty officers were injured and the four constables were at the front line.

Politicians expressed support and the focus shifted to the Block's drug problems. Sydney wanted to believe the men and women employed to protect it did the right thing.

On February 16, Carr said he was told the officers were not chasing TJ at the time of the accident but were looking for a bag-snatcher. "Advice from police is that the heat and alcohol played a large part," the Premier said of the riot. "I've got full confidence in the way police tackled this incident."

Police Association president Ian Ball went further: "As usual it's the cops who are the scapegoats and it's not right."

Back at the cop shop, on February 14, Rocha, Hollingsworth, Rimell and Reynolds discussed the details of their statements before giving them to superiors. No one up the chain of command thought to separate the officers from police trucks Redfern 16 and Redfern 17. And the four officers didn't conceive they might be in trouble if it was revealed they talked about the statements before writing them.

"Did you discuss whether any of you had seen (TJ) prior to the scene?" Liz Fullerton SC, counsel assisting the coroner, asked Rocha.

"Yes," Rocha replied.

"Do I take it logically you would then discuss where you had seen him?" "Yes." "Did you discuss what you have done in response to having seen him earlier?" "Yes."

Hollingsworth and Reynolds omitted a vital detail from their original statements. Only moments before TJ was flung from his bicycle as his brakes failed, they drove to the end of the cul-de-sac at Renwick Street, mounted the kerb, and drove straight down the footpath after him. A gate blocked the car, but TJ shot out on to Phillip Street.

In her February 14 statement, Reynolds wrote: "I saw Hickey 55 metres away, travelling very fast on Renwick St. Hollingsworth then turned the vehicle around and we began to travel north on Renwick St."

It wasn't until February 21, when investigating officer Michael Kyneur formally interviewed her, that Reynolds mentioned the footpath.

In intervening days, the riots prompted intense media interest and witnesses were interviewed. The four officers were on rostered days off.

During two briefings on February 14, Redfern officers viewed closed-circuit television footage of Christopher Carr, an Aboriginal man in his 20s, snatching a bag from a woman at the station and dragging her along the road. Carr was last seen across the road from where Hollingsworth and Reynolds say they first saw TJ cycling and he wore similar clothes to TJ. The briefings were not recorded.

In court, Reynolds rolled her eyes at more than one question and her most common reply was "I don't recall". "For those of us who have heard police officers give evidence over many, many, many years, the claimed failure to recall is sometimes not in fact an honest answer," Fullerton said icily.

Rocha and Rimell gave evidence they saw TJ at the car park, agreed he wasn't Carr, passed Hollingsworth and Reynolds on Renwick Street, and drove around the corner to Phillip Street. On Phillip Street, Rimell said a man signalled to indicate someone went down a driveway of 1 Phillip Street - a public housing tower block surrounded by metal fencing. Rimell didn't ask who it was, what they wore or why he gave him the information.

Giving evidence about whether they knew the boy they found hanging on the fence was the same boy on the bike, Rocha and Rimell seemed to suffer temporary amnesia.

Both asserted in court they didn't realise it was him and did not initially see the bike. But Rimell's police radio alert suggests otherwise: "Behind number 1 Phillip St. Male impaled on fence off a pushbike," he said.

In her statement, Rocha says: "I looked over and saw what appeared to be a T-shirt ... I realised it wasn't a T-shirt, but a young man who had been riding his bicycle who was impaled on the fence."

"Is the truth of the matter that you were chasing this young man on his bicycle?" counsel for TJ's mother Gail, John Stratton SC, asked Rimell.

"Nuh," he replied.

Rocha and Reynolds denied telling Danny Townsend, the man who found TJ impaled, that "we saw him up at Redfern station, but we did not recognise him, so we followed him to see who it was".

Reynolds denied any conversation at all when she and Hollingsworth trailed TJ.

After three days of excruciating questioning of Rocha, Rimell and Reynolds from the bar table this week, the official police version of the events leading to TJ's death seemed questionable at best. The public gallery sat in silent amazement. Gail Hickey allowed herself the odd sardonic smile.

Hollingsworth, who drove Redfern 16, was due to give evidence on Thursday, but it was abruptly decided he needed his own lawyer. With that, lawyer Ken Madden swept into the inquest and requested an adjournment until Monday. Leaving court, his client would only say "no comment".

Source: The Australian

Further information: redfern riots

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