WARNING: This story contains the name and images of a deceased indigenous person.
A robbed car of cream color, a towel and a white box are key to unanswered questions that have been delayed in the 37 years since indigenous adolescent Mark Haines was found dead on the train.
Haines’ body was found on the roads to the south of Tamworth in NSW on the morning of January 16, 1988, not far from the star car.
An autopsy showed that Gomeroi’s teenager died from a traumatic head injury.
The initial police investigation concluded that the 17 -year -old was deliberately or in a stunned state, something that his family has never believed.
Craigie participated in a traditional smoking ceremony outside the court of NSW forensics, in western Sydney, in front of the deputy coroner Harriet Grahame this morning.
Opening the last week of hearings, the lawyer who attended Chris McGorey described the previous hours and after the death of Haines.
While a train of goods was traveling from Werris Creek station to West Tamworth before dawn on January 16, the crew noticed what seemed to be a white box on the tracks, McGorey said.
The train was traveling on the box under rain around 5.45 am, making a sound like hitting a small animal.
When the crew traveled back to the area on a different train at 6 in the morning, the driver obtained a “fleeting” vision of a body in the middle of the tracks, but could not stop before running on him.
Emergency services soon found Haines’s body with a towel or blanket under their head.
But none of the workers remembered to have seen anyone put it there while recovering their body, McGorey said.
The police also found a light color torana near the train tracks, their windshield on the floor, which seemed to have shot.
The car may have been stolen from a Tamworth house around 3.47 am and had Christmas boxes and Christmas blankets, McGorey said.
“Several questions have emerged in the last 37 years,” he told the investigation.
He said that the coroner can consider questions that include how and why Haines became on the tracks, which may have been with him at that time and which of the two trains they hit him.
They have informed previous audiences about rumors that several Tamworth locals know more about the death of Haines, including friends who were the last to see him alive.
His close friend Glenn Mannion, who gave evidence in the 1988 investigation, denied any type of participation.
“I have no idea what happened to Mark or how it ended there,” said Mannion, under the interrogation of today’s investigation.
“100 percent, absolutely, was not me.”
The audiences will continue until Friday.
For the support of crisis 24/7 directed by aboriginal people and island of the Strait of Torres, contact 13yarn (13 92 76).
Readers looking for support can contact Lifeline in 13 11 14 or beyond blue in 1300 22 4636.
