Police in Australia’s Northern Territory said on Sunday they had charged a man with murdering an Indigenous girl, days after the five-year-old’s death sparked violent clashes in an outback town.
Jefferson Lewis (47) was also charged with two other offences, which cannot be publicly disclosed for legal reasons, over the death of Kumanjayi Little Baby, the name by which the victim is known in line with Indigenous custom, police said in a statement.
“This is a horrific event and a horrific set of circumstances and our thoughts remain strongly with the family,” Northern Territory Police Commissioner Martin Dole said in televised remarks from Alice Springs.
Lewis, who had presented himself to one of the camps on the outskirts of the outback town, was charged on Saturday evening and will appear in court in the territory’s capital, Darwin, on Tuesday, police said.
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The girl’s killing and subsequent capture of the suspect, after he was found and beaten unconscious by locals, sparked protests by roughly 400 Indigenous people near Alice Springs late on Thursday. Lewis has past convictions for physical assault and had recently been released from prison.
Some demonstrators threw projectiles and lit fires, injuring a number of police officers and medical workers and damaging police vehicles, ambulances and fire trucks. Members of the crowd were seen in televised footage calling for payback – traditional, mostly physical, punishment in Aboriginal societies.
Police used tear gas to disperse the protesters, while prime minister Anthony Albanese, local officials and a spokesperson for the victim’s family appealed for calm.
Australia has struggled for decades to reconcile with its Indigenous people, who have inhabited the land for some 50,000 years but were marginalised by British colonial rule. Indigenous Australians account for 3.8 per cent of the population and face disadvantages including discrimination, poor health and education outcomes and high incarceration rates.
Thousands, including the victim and her family, live in camp communities where housing and services are often inadequate. A fifth of Alice Springs citizens are Indigenous.
The victim’s body was located on Thursday by one of hundreds of people searching the dense bushland around the town, a popular tourist destination that has previously had problems with alcohol-fuelled violence. – Reuters
