In 2020, Toowoomba police officers bent the knee in support of #BLM. Within a year and a half, they killed two Aboriginal men in separate incidents.

The families of Ashley Washington and Stevie Lee Nixon-McKellar are still fighting for justice.

This is the first excerpt in a series on black deaths in custody in the Queensland town of Toowoomba. Next week, I’ll be publishing stories on the deaths of Stevie Lee Nixon-McKellar and Ashley Washington.

The family of Stevie Lee Nixon-McKellar have organised a petition, calling on the Queensland State Coroner to release the bodycam footage of his death. Please sign the petition here.

(An image from the rally for Stevie Lee Nixon McKellar, held before the coronial inquest into his death in September 2023. Stevie’s family held a rally where they walked from Queen’s Park, to the steps of the courthouse, laying 551 flowers for victims of black deaths in custody. Image: Charandev Singh).

In June 2020, a group of about 200 people walked through the picturesque Queen’s Park in Toowoomba, Queensland, on the same street as the town’s police station and courthouse, holding Black Lives Matter placards.

‘Justice for David Dungay Jnr! Justice for Mulrunji! Justice for George Floyd!’ they chanted, joining the tens of thousands across the country, and the millions worldwide. The blackfellas in attendance walked behind at the rear of the rally or towards the centre.

An hour and a half away down the Toowoomba range, 30,000 people were marching through the centre of Brisbane’s CBD; and further south and across the country, a collective 200,000 converged on Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth; but here, in quiet Toowoomba, the protest, led by a local African Australian group, walked through the gardens, careful not to disrupt a cricket game or any of the flowers.

The month prior, a police officer in Minneapolis, USA, had killed African American man George Floyd by holding his knee to his neck for more than nine minutes, a form of chokehold or neck restraint utilised by police.

It was the bystander footage of Floyd’s death that sparked outrage, drew condemnation, amplified the call that Black Lives Matter, and led to national and international rallies. Before an autopsy, before a murder charge, before an investigation, there was the footage, which showed blatantly that Floyd’s death was not accidental or justified or natural causes. It was a killing, a homicide, and Floyd’s crime had been to be black in public. After Floyd was murdered, 32 of the United States’ 65 largest police departments placed bans or restrictions on the use of neck restraints, according to the Washington Post.

So, we walked across the country, and in Toowoomba, the protesters walked through Queen’s Park, which in Spring is a carnival of colours for the annual flower festival, but on this day was cold, crisp and clear, and as they walked, three uniformed Toowoomba police officers stood watching, their guns on one side and their batons on the other.

The rally cautiously approached the cops, moving closer, and as the space narrowed between them, one police officer stepped forward.

(Toowoomba police officers bend the knee at the Black Lives Matter rally in Queen’s Park in June 2020.)

The leaders of the rally halted, the rally moving in front of them, and they continued to yell ‘Black Lives Matter! I Can’t Breathe!” Then, the first cop walked forward and dropped to one knee.

The two police officers behind him followed suit, and there they were: a trinity of cops bending the knee in front of a majority non-Indigenous rally still chanting the last words of George Floyd and David Dungay Jnr, who was killed by correctional officers in Long Bay in Sydney.

The rally continued chanting, and then clapped for the officers, and then they moved on, with blackfellas looking on quizzically, walking in the rear

(A grab from a 7News report on the Toowoomba Black Lives Matter rally in 2020.)

The rally moved on, and the town moved on, and within the next two years, the Toowoomba police moved on to kill two young Aboriginal men - 31-year-old Kamilaroi man Ashley Washington and 27-year-old Gungarri man Stevie Lee Nixon-McKellar - in separate incidents, both times on the streets of Toowoomba.

Both men suffered cardiac arrests, and in both cases, forensic pathologists claimed their cause of death was ‘multifactorial’, that they had underlying health conditions, and that they could not determine whether the police had anything to do with their deaths at all.

(Stevie Lee Nixon McKellar)

Ashley had been tasered six times, and then had been restrained, and administered a sedative by paramedics. He died in the ambulance. Stevie Lee had been put in a chokehold, which was an authorised move called a “Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint”. The last words Stevie Lee heard were one of the officers yelling out ‘choke the c**t out”, before another officer put him in the chokehold.

Both deaths were subject to coronial inquests, one of the only recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIDAC) to be implemented, but in both cases, the Coroner Terry Ryan absolved the police of any wrongdoing.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service (ATSILS) had tried to get the two cases linked in a combined inquest, because of their similarities - including the fact that one of the officers had been involved in both deaths. But Coroner Ryan had knocked back the request, claiming “the fact that the same officers attended at both deaths is not surprising given the size of Toowoomba and the pool of available police officers.”

Coroner Ryan had also knocked back Steven’s family’s request to include structural and institutional racism in the scope of his inquest.

Stevie Lee’s inquest was held in Toowoomba in September 2023, two years after he was killed, in the Toowoomba courthouse, just a short walk from Queens Park.

In the lead up, Stevie’s family and mother, Dr Raelene Nixon, knew the “coronial inquest wasn’t going to be a place of justice.”

(Stevie Lee’s mother Raelene Nixon'lays flowers at the step of the Toowoomba courthouse. Image: Charandev Singh).

On the first day, they organised a rally from Queens Park, where they spoke out forcefully for justice for Stevie Lee. Members of the local Toowoomba Aboriginal community conducted a smoking ceremony and welcome, and they walked away from the park, onto the street, holding over 551 flowers and candles to lay at the steps of the courthouse, in recognition of every black death in custody, in recognition of every single injustice.

“It was to symbolise this wasn’t just about one death. This is what the experience is for a lot of Aboriginal men in this country and especially in Queensland,” Dr Nixon told Black Witness.

Earlier this month, on a Friday, the coroner’s office emailed the findings of Stevie Lee’s inquest to his mother, Dr Raelene Nixon, nearly two years after the inquest was held in Toowoomba in September 2023. The family were not given the dignity of an in-person hearing. Throughout the inquest, the family had also felt silenced throughout the process.

“We knew the coronial inquest wasn’t going to be a place of justice,” Dr Nixon told Black Witness. “They had created that narrative from the very beginning about criminalising Steven and blaming him for his own death.

“I’ve learnt from that experience how the powers that be protect the powers that be, and how these institutions strategically set out to protect themselves. And I realise there was never an opportunity for truth-telling or accountability.”

Ashley Washington’s step father Paul Henningsen, who raised Ashley since he was a young child, told Black Witness that there had been no attention paid to his son and the inquest had also criminalised him. His family was left with no answers.

“The inquest was more or less about how he had been in trouble before. But it doesn’t matter how much a person’s been in trouble, how come there’s only two fellas, not that far apart, same sort of circumstances, and they die?,” Mr Henningsen told Black Witness.

“I’m white myself, but how come all these whitefellas don’t die when they are arrested?

“You don’t hear about it.”

This is the first story in a series about black deaths in custody in Toowoomba.

As always, you can send feedback or any tips to amy@blackwitness.com