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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/05/roger-davies-died-with-nine-broken-ribs-police-deemed-his-death-non-suspicious-and-sent-him-to-a-paupers-grave>
"In the shell of an abandoned house, beneath cobwebs spun across blackened
walls, the skeleton of Roger Davies lay forgotten amid the rubbish.
Davies had come to this burnt-out home in Granville, western Sydney, seeking
shelter, a place to squat alongside other rough sleepers fleeing Australia’s
broken housing system.
Instead the 42-year-old army veteran found a shocking and premature end, an
experience common to Australians experiencing homelessness.
Davies’ body then lay on the ground floor of that abandoned house for three
long years, 140 metres down the road from the local police station.
Passersby noticed an overpowering smell but did nothing and Davies was
discovered only by chance in April 2015 when a woman arrived to scavenge
through the refuse.
She found Davies, still dressed in the blue shirt and brown pants he died in, a
watch hanging loosely from his skeletal wrist.
Upstairs, police would later find an unanswered plea for help: an application
for emergency housing filled out in Davies’ name about one month before he is
believed to have died.
In shaky handwriting, Davies told the department he’d been seeking public
housing for years and was now becoming desperate.
“Getting robbed all the time,” he wrote, indicating he was facing “violence
and/or harassment from another person” in the squat house.
A postmortem examination would find Davies sustained fractures to nine ribs
about the time of his death.
Despite the signs of potential violence and Davies’ handwritten complaints,
police records show officers formed the opinion there was “no evidence of
suspicious circumstances”.
“There is an absence of any severe physical injury, large amounts of blood
loss, known conflicts or possible motive for any person to seriously harm the
deceased,” the investigators wrote.
Instead, police formed the opinion Davies had overdosed, despite no record of
drug paraphernalia being found at the scene and no toxicology report or other
supporting evidence.
The investigators said they had based their opinion on his “history”.
Davies’ family were told nothing of his death for more than two years, neither
by police nor the state government."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
