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"If you don't break the law, you don't die in custody. Simple".
The 22-year-old was taken to the Hedland Health Campus three times, the first two times she was sent back to the police station and on the third visit she arrived and died shortly after.
An autopsy found Dhu died from pneumonia and septicaemia, compounded by a broken rib she acquired through domestic violence.
“By the morning of 4 August, 2014, Ms Dhu’s clinical state rapidly worsened, and although it was not appreciated by the police officers involved, some of whom believed that Ms Dhu was feigning her illness, she was in an advanced state of septic shock and only hours from death,” Ilona O’Brien, the counsel assisting coroner Ros Fogliani, told the inquest on Monday.
CCTV vision on the morning of Dhu's death shows that she was vomiting and had fallen back and hit her head on the concrete floor.
Shift supervisor Sergeant Rick Bond, writing in the custody system at the time, said, “[Ms Dhu] appears to be suffering withdrawals from drug use and is not coping well with being in custody”.
Dhu was eventually taken to the hospital, her limp body handcuffed and carried to a police paddy wagon. As she is being placed inside the vehicle Dhu moaned in agony and one of the officers told her to "shut up".
At the hospital, Dhu suffered a heart attack, but one of the officers told the nurse on duty that she most likely pretending, the inquest heard.
“Nurse Jones recalled that the police officers reported to her that Ms Dhu was ‘faking it’. However on assessing Ms Dhu, nurse Jones realised that Ms Dhu was in cardio-pulmonary arrest,” O’Brien told the court.
Dhu's family want a criminal conviction to come from the inquest.
"I’ve always thought a conviction would be appropriate justice, but we’ve never ever had a conviction in Australian history for any [Aboriginal] deaths in custody," Harris said.
"It's still shocking to see the CCTV footage again. Words can’t describe what we [Dhu's family] feel when we watch her last days. It’s eerie, it’s chilling and no one should ever be treated in that way regardless of their colour".
"The fact that it’s a young 22-year-old young lady who was really sick and was left to die like a dog just makes it even more spine tingling".
The inquest is set to continue for another week.