{Julieka Dhu, 22, died in a police cell in Western Australia in 2014, after she was locked up for not paying fines.}<\/p>\n
An Australian coroner’s inquest into a young Aboriginal woman’s death in police custody – where she was being held for not paying fines – has wrapped up after four weeks of evidence.<\/p>\n
The inquest concluded on Thursday, with Coroner Ros Fogliani not expecting to release her findings for several months.<\/p>\n
Julieka Dhu, 22, died in August 2014 in a police cell in Port Hedland, in the state of Western Australia. She had been arrested and held over the non-payment of about $3,000 in minor fines.<\/p>\n
Before her death, she was twice taken in the back of a police van to the local hospital after complaining of feeling unwell. Both times, after a quick check-over, she was returned to her cell. <\/p>\n
She died the third time she was taken to the hospital – after her condition deteriorated further.<\/p>\n
A post-mortem examination found that she had suffered pneumonia and blood poisoning.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera’s Andrew Thomas, reporting from Port Hedland, said Dhu’s death has angered indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, who have had enough of people dying in custody.<\/p>\n
“About 1,400 Australians have died in police custody since 1980, among them a disproportionate number of Aboriginal people, because they make up a disproportionately high number of those in prison,” Thomas said.<\/p>\n
“After much public pressure, the coronial inquest is looking into the exact circumstances of Dhu’s death – and whether she was a victim of institutional racism.”<\/p>\n
Dhu’s family is also pushing for changes in how authorities deal with people who have not paid minor fines.<\/p>\n
“She paid the biggest price. I want the truth and justice for Juleika,” her grandmother Carol Roe told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
“They knew she was sick. Why didn’t they ring an ambulance to take her. No, they chucked her in the back of a paddy wagon to take her – and that\u2019s not right.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Julieka Dhu, 22, died in a police cell in Western Australia in 2014, after she was locked up for not paying fines.} An Australian coroner’s inquest into a young Aboriginal woman’s death in police custody – where she was being held for not paying fines – has wrapped up after four weeks of evidence. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24143"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24143"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}