Three decades on, officials still under fire over Aboriginal deaths in custody
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Why was a sober, harmless man who had caused no injury to anyone locked up at all?
It was a question posed by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody when the inquiry examined the death of Yorta Yorta man Harrison Day, locked up in a police cell in Echuca in 1982. Left unchecked for three hours, he suffered an epileptic fit that killed him.
The same question posed by Commissioner Hal Wootten 30 years ago could be asked again in 2017. Tanya Day, Mr Day’s niece, hit her head in a police cell at Castlemaine and died in hospital. She had been arrested for public drunkenness after she was found intoxicated and sleeping peacefully on a V-Line train to Melbourne.