NSW Police declare Hannah Thomas's injury during protest arrest a 'critical incident'
An investigation into how a 35-year-old woman was physically harmed while being placed under arrest at a pro-Palestinian protest will begin after NSW Police declared the situation a critical incident.
On June 27, Hannah Thomas — who ran for the seat of Grayndler in the 2025 federal election — sustained severe injuries to her right eye when she was arrested while at a protest in south-west Sydney.
The former Greens candidate was one of roughly 60 people, according to NSW Police, protesting outside a manufacturing facility in Belmore.
The protesters allege the facility is supplying components used in a type of jet flown by the Israel Defence Force. The company, SEC Plating, has denied these claims.
According to NSW Police, after two move on directions were issued to those at the protest, including Ms Thomas, the 35-year-old was subsequently arrested for "allegedly failing to comply".
One witness who spoke to the ABC on the condition of anonymity said Ms Thomas was hit in the face when officers attempted to get her onto her feet.
Videos of the protest show a woman being dragged away from the group of protesters before falling to the ground with an officer.
In the same video, officers can be heard saying, "Get up now", with a woman replying "I'm trying".
"I was engaged in peaceful protests and my interactions with NSW Police have left me potentially without vision in my right eye permanently," Ms Thomas said in a video while in Bankstown Hospital on Sunday night.
According to NSW Police, the decision to declare this a critical incident came on Monday afternoon, after Ms Thomas's medical records were provided to the force's designated medical officer.
NSW Police said, after received, it was determined that the level of the injuries warranted a critical incident declaration, with the suggestion actioned by Assistant Commissioner Brett McFadden.
A critical incident is an event involving a NSW Police officer that results in the death or serious injury of a person, with police required to investigate once declared.
A designated team pulled from Campbelltown City Police Area Command will now investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident, which in turn will be reviewed by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission.
It is currently not known when the investigation will begin.
The announcement follows four days of controversy over Ms Thomas's arrest, with federal and NSW Greens members condemning what happened.
It also comes one day after Ms Thomas was charged by police for resisting arrest and refusing to comply with officers.
She is scheduled to appear at Bankstown Local Court on August 12.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
20 minutes ago
- ABC News
The evidence laid before the jury in Erin Patterson's murder trial
As they retire to consider their verdicts, the jurors in Erin Patterson's triple-murder trial have no shortage of evidence to reflect upon. More than 50 witnesses have given testimony and the hearings have stretched for nine weeks. Here are the people and places at the heart of the trial. The lunch guests The trial centres on a lunch hosted by Erin at her Leongatha home in Victoria's South Gippsland region on July 29, 2023. Erin hosted four people that day: her parents-in-law Don and Gail Patterson, along with Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson and her husband Ian. Erin's estranged husband Simon Patterson was also invited, but turned down the offer. Don, Gail and Heather all died from death cap mushroom poisoning after the beef Wellington lunch, while Ian survived after weeks in hospital. Prosecutors have alleged that Erin deliberately laced the meal with death caps. But the 50-year-old has maintained her innocence, telling the court that foraged mushrooms made their way into the meal by mistake. Family tensions in months leading up to lunch Prosecutors did not allege a specific motive for Ms Patterson to murder three relatives and attempt to murder a fourth. But they did take the jury through what they alleged was growing anger and resentment the accused felt towards the Pattersons. The court heard that by late 2022, there was a disagreement between Ms Patterson and her estranged husband over finances, including school and doctor's fees for their children. At one point, the court heard Erin had tried to bring in her in-laws — Don and Gail Patterson — to help mediate the situation. The prosecution highlighted to the jury Facebook messages in which Ms Patterson used strong language to express frustration with her parents-in-law about their reluctance to get involved in their financial dispute. Ms Patterson told the court while she was feeling hurt, frustrated and "a little bit desperate", her relationship with her in-laws had remained positive and she was ashamed of the disrespectful language she had used while venting to her Facebook friends. Her defence lawyer Colin Mandy SC accused the prosecution of highlighting a handful of messages from a brief episode of tension, producing a distorted impression. "It was such a polite, kind and good relationship that these messages stand out, but they're not consistent with the whole of the relationship," Mr Mandy said. Ms Patterson said a desire to build a stronger relationship had motivated her to invite her in-laws to lunch. The evidence on foraged mushrooms In the years leading up to the lunch, Erin's life was largely based in the towns of Leongatha and Korumburra. The two South Gippsland communities sit pretty close to one another, each with populations of a few thousand people. It was in this region that Erin Patterson told the court she began foraging mushrooms during Victoria's COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. Eventually, she said she felt she had gathered enough knowledge to taste some of the mushrooms she had foraged during walks near the two towns. "They tasted good and I didn't get sick," she said. Her defence lawyer said this "burgeoning" interest in foraging had led Erin to investigate whether the notorious death cap mushroom species grew in her area in May 2022. The court heard she turned to a website called iNaturalist, where users share observations from nature to a community map. When Erin visited the site in 2022, no death caps were flagged in the South Gippsland area. But in the months before her lunch, two sightings were posted to iNaturalist at Loch and Outtrim. The prosecution alleged mobile phone data supported the claim that Erin travelled to Loch and Outtrim shortly after death caps were identified there to deliberately forage the deadly species. But her defence team raised questions over the accuracy of the mobile phone tower data being used by the prosecution to reach those conclusions. They told the jury Erin had been foraging at places like the Korumburra Botanic Gardens in the lead-up to the lunch, but not at Loch and Outtrim. The search for Asian grocer mushrooms As well as foraging mushrooms before the lunch, Erin said she had bought dried mushrooms from an Asian grocer in Melbourne's south-east. Erin told the court the grocer-bought mushrooms were ultimately mixed up with foraged mushrooms in a plastic container in her Leongatha pantry. She said it was this container of mixed mushrooms she later drew upon to remedy a "bland" mushroom paste for the beef Wellington lunch — with disastrous consequences. The court heard that after the lunch guests fell fatally ill, Erin was unable to identify the store to health officials, who were urgently chasing up information about potential death caps in circulation. Instead she offered a number of suburbs to those questioning her, variously identifying Oakleigh, Clayton, Mount Waverley or Glen Waverley. A council worker began visiting Asian-style grocery stores in the area. However, their efforts failed to find any product matching Erin's description and the health department concluded its investigation. Erin rejected the prosecution claim that the story about an Asian grocer was a lie created by her as part of her cover-up after the lunch. Conflicting evidence on plates at lunch The day of the lunch, Erin finalised the special meal of individually parcelled beef Wellingtons for her guests. She rejected a prosecution claim that deviations to the recipe were made to ensure only her guests were served meals laced with deadly mushrooms. Erin told the court she and her guests ate from plates that may have been black, white, and red on top and black underneath and nobody was given any one particular plate. That account given to the court differs from that of surviving lunch guest Ian Wilkinson, who told the trial the guests had eaten from grey plates, while Erin had eaten from a smaller, orange-coloured plate. Ian also told the court that Erin had informed her guests she had been diagnosed with cancer and was worried about how to tell her children. Erin disputed that she had told her relatives a cancer diagnosis had been made, but agreed she had lied about possibly needing cancer treatment in the future. She told the court she did not have cancer and had told the lie to conceal private plans to have gastric-bypass surgery. "I was really embarrassed, I was ashamed of the fact that I didn't have control over my body or what I ate, I was ashamed of that … I didn't want to tell anybody, but I shouldn't have lied to them," she said. Guests revealed to have suffered from death cap poisoning In the days after the lunch, the guests began falling ill. Erin told the court this included her, but also that she had binge eaten some cake and vomited shortly after her guests had left. Erin Patterson's Leongatha home, where she hosted the lunch. ( ABC News ) Ultimately, Erin and the four guests were transferred to hospitals in Melbourne, where Gail, Don and Heather later died. Ian survived after a weeks-long stay in intensive care. Doctors have told the court the medical tests which revealed signs of death cap poisoning in the four lunch guests did not show the same markers for Erin. The prosecution alleged Erin had faked her illness as part of her cover-up — a claim rejected by her lawyer, who said there were many valid reasons why she may not have fallen as ill as her guests. On Wednesday, having already been discharged from hospital in Melbourne, Erin made a trip to the local tip. This is where she dumped a food dehydrator. Erin told the court she'd taken the dehydrator to the tip because she was aware by that point that death cap mushrooms were the suspected source of poisoning in the meal, and she had been using the appliance to dehydrate foraged mushrooms. But she refuted the prosecution's suggestion that she had knowingly dehydrated toxic mushrooms. Police begin investigating A week after the lunch, homicide detectives visited Erin at her Leongatha home and told her they were investigating the deadly lunch. In the August 5 search, they seized a number of devices, including a mobile phone which the court heard Erin had performed three factory resets on. One of these was carried out on the day of the search, which came days after Erin said Simon had accused her of poisoning his parents with mushrooms prepared in her dehydrator. "I knew that there were photos in there of mushrooms and the dehydrator and I just panicked and didn't want them [police] to see them," Erin told the court. Hours after the police search, Erin ran the third factory reset remotely, as the phone sat in a police station in Melbourne. "It was really stupid, but I thought I wonder if they've been silly enough to leave it connected to the internet and so I hit factory reset to see what happened, and it did," she said. Detectives returned months later, when they ran a second search of her home, and ultimately laid murder and attempted murder charges against Ms Patterson in November. More than 18 months later, after jurors had heard weeks of evidence in a Gippsland court, Justice Christopher Beale gave his final directions before they retired to consider the verdicts. "You are the only ones in this court who can make a decision about these facts," he told the jury. The jury continues to deliberate. Credits:
ABC News
34 minutes ago
- ABC News
Why weren't Cassius Turvey and Cleveland Dodd safe in Western Australia?
WARNING: This story contains references to suicide and self-harm and will be distressing for some readers. In Western Australia, two First Nations families are on parallel tracks, seeking justice for their teenage sons taken from them before their time. On the surface, there are few similarities between the deaths of Cassius Turvey and Cleveland Dodd, beyond them being Aboriginal, living in Perth, and their tragic deaths in their teens. But the pain their families are left with is the same. Against the natural order of things, two mothers have buried their sons. Two boys who should have been safe and protected — but weren't. In 2022, 15-year-old Cassius Turvey was walking home from school when he was "hunted" and viciously attacked by a gang of men. He died in hospital 10 days later from his injuries. He wasn't safe to walk home in daylight in the eastern suburbs of Perth. He wasn't safe in his community. Last week, Cassius Turvey's murderers were sentenced to life in prison. On the steps of the courthouse after the sentencing, his mother, Mechelle Turvey, proclaimed it was "justice". "There are no words that can fully capture the devastation of losing someone you love to violence," she said. "Cassius was not just part of my life, he was my future. "I will never see him grow older, never hear his voice again, never feel the comfort of his embrace … no parent should have to visit the grave of an innocent 15-year-old child who did nothing wrong." In 2023, 16-year-old Cleveland Dodd was a child being held in Casuarina Prison, an adult detention centre, albeit in the "juvenile wing". He attempted to end his own life using a hanging point in his cell and died in hospital a week later. The first child in Western Australia to die in custody. He wasn't safe under the watch of the state. He wasn't safe from known risks to his life. This week, the inquest into Cleveland Dodd's death will hear closing arguments. There is hope his death will lead to reforms to make other children in detention safer. In a statement, Cleveland's mother, Nadene Dodd, told the inquest she thought her son would be "safe" in detention. "I thought my son was safe … and that he would leave detention rehabilitated … better, not worse off," she said in a statement. "My son didn't deserve to be treated the way that he was treated. My son didn't deserve to die." It raises the question: where are First Nations children safe? Where can they be allowed to grow up — and do all that comes with it? To learn, to make mistakes, to grow? Where is the safe place for them? In recent years, across the country, a slew of new legislation has been introduced by governments to get "tough on crime". These laws have often been spurred on by high-profile crimes and calls from the community and commentators for governments to take action to "protect" the community. These include "adult-crime, adult time" laws in Queensland, "post and boast" laws in New South Wales and soon Victoria, enhanced stop and search powers in Victoria, and new "street gang" laws proposed in South Australia. These laws will all target young people, with a view to stopping criminal activity from becoming ingrained behaviour, and have all been designed with "community safety" in mind. But that "safety" comes with unintended consequences, the brunt of which is usually borne by Indigenous communities. Over-policing of Indigenous communities leads to more Indigenous people in prisons, where they are less likely to be bailed, disproportionately locked up and over-represented among deaths in custody. But there is no guarantee these laws will have the desired effect. In fact, research shows that over-policing of young people leads to poorer outcomes, an increased likelihood of being on remand and further contact with the justice system. It can be the first domino to fall in what can lead to adult offending, jail time and all of the well-documented risks that come with being Aboriginal in prison. Risks that took Cleveland Dodd's life, and almost 600 other First Nations people since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991. The coronial inquest into Cleveland Dodd's death will make findings on the factors and events leading up to his death in 2023 and whether there were institutional failings. This will include looking at whether the juvenile wing, Unit 18, was a safe place to house young people, and the numerous warnings provided about conditions inside it. Removing hanging points from prisons was a recommendation of the royal commission 35 years ago, but many still remain and in some cases, as reported by The Guardian last month, the same hanging points have been used in multiple suicides in prison. But there have been no reactive law changes to make children in prisons safer following Cleveland's death. No snap legislation to make the conditions he died in illegal, and Unit 18 remains open with children kept in detention alongside adults, despite calls for the unit to close immediately. It is hard to imagine many reasons why the first child to die in detention in WA would not mark a turning point, a moment in which the state government would say "never again". Cleveland's death has largely been met with silence by legislators. The issue of racism has been threaded through Cassius Turvey's murder, after his attackers used racist slurs as they "hunted" Cassius and his friends down. At the time, the police commissioner, Col Blanch, was quick to dismiss notions of the attack being racially motivated, saying Cassius was "in the wrong place at the wrong time". But in the community, the fear was real; it was palpable. Mothers knew their children weren't safe to be visibly blak and walking through their suburbs. After Cassius's killers were sentenced, Mechelle Turvey said her son had been "racially vilified". "That's the truth. If anyone thinks their actions were not racially motivated, many Australians would be left scratching their head," she said. The West Australian Supreme Court did not prosecute whether Cassius had been the victim of a racially motivated attack, but Justice Quinlan said the use of racist slurs "rippled" throughout the community and created "justifiable fear". "It's no surprise … that the kids would think they were being targeted because they were Aboriginal, and the attack would create justifiable fear for them and for the broader community that this was a racially motivated attack," he said. "The fear is real and legitimate. You are responsible for that fear." Despite this, there has been no "tough on crime" response — no move by legislators to toughen up laws against racial attacks, refuse bail to offenders or increase police powers to address racially motivated crimes. The need for Indigenous communities to feel safe has not spurred on reactive legislation that could see harsher punishment for using racist slurs, despite hate speech being a known precursor to racially motivated violence. The safety of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is too often compromised by members of parliament needing to be seen to be doing their best to "protect the community" — despite the numerous studies and experts telling them what the consequences for First Nations people will be. After the justice processes for Cassius and Cleveland have concluded and their families left to grieve away from the spotlight, the question will remain: will anything be done to protect Indigenous kids from the communities that harm them?
West Australian
2 hours ago
- West Australian
Religious speech ruling looms over 'vile' Jew sermons
An Islamic preacher sued for calling Jews "vile and treacherous" will learn if he has defended a discrimination lawsuit by arguing for religious freedom. Sydney-based Al Madina Dawah Centre cleric Wissam Haddad has been accused of racial discrimination during a series of fiery sermons from late 2023 that racked up thousands of views online. In the speeches, Mr Haddad - also known as Abu Ousayd - referred to Jewish people as "vile", "treacherous", "murderous" and "descendants of pigs and apes". The Federal Court lawsuit was filed by Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim and deputy president Robert Goot. They want court orders that the published lectures, which they say are offensive and could incite violence towards Jews, be taken down and Mr Haddad banned from making similar comments. Justice Angus Stewart will deliver his judgment on Tuesday. At a hearing in June, Mr Haddad's lawyers argued that the speeches were not racist, but rather they were protected speech because they were historical and religious lectures delivered in good faith to contextualise the war in Gaza. While initially claiming that the sermons were made for a small private Muslim audience, the Islamic preacher admitted part-way through the hearing that he knew they would be published online. Lawyers for the two Jewish leaders have accused Haddad of engaging in an offensive pattern of behaviour, pointing to provocative statements he previously made about Christian and Hindu communities.
