An Australian private security firm blamed errant staff yesterday for the death of an Aboriginal man who “cooked” to death in one of its vans, and rejected any racial factor in the incident.
Tim Hill, G4S’s director of public affairs, also dismissed any link to an earlier incident where a detainee locked in a van became so thirsty that he drank his own urine.
Hill said two staff members had disobeyed instructions to stop every two hours and check on the Aboriginal man, known as Mr Ward, whose January 2008 death from heatstroke was branded “inhumane” by a Western Australia coroner. “GSL’s procedures were not totally inadequate. Why this incident happened is because two officers disobeyed an instruction they were given to stop every two hours,” Hill told ABC radio. GSL is the former name of G4S.
Ward, 46, was transported 360km to jail in temperatures of up to 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in a van with faulty air conditioning after being picked up for drink-driving.
The victim spent nearly four hours in the van at the height of the Outback summer and suffered third-degree burns where his body touched the metal floor, the inquest heard.
“Certainly there were failures in the procedures as much as they weren’t in writing. We’ve taken substantial steps to prevent this happening again,” Hill added. Hill brushed aside any link between the death and the earlier incident in 2005, when employees of GSL locked five detainees in a van for seven hours with no food and only one bottle of water.
Hill also dismissed any notion of a racial factor in Ward’s death and said there was no reason for the West Australian government not to renew its prison services contract.
“That’s an absolute nonsense as far as this company is concerned,” he said, when questioned on the race issue.
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