Aunty Tanya Day was a 55 year old Yorta Yorta woman who died while in police custody after being arrested for public intoxication while on a train. Tanya was drunk and asleep on a VLine train headed to Melbourne when a ticket inspector decided she was unruly and called the police. Tanya was taken to Castlemaine Police Station, where she was left in a cell and check on for a total of less than thirty seconds in the four hours she was held there. Tanya sustained a serious head injury that caused a cerebral bleed and her eventual death. #JusticeForTanyaDay

EPISODE NOTES:

If the recommendations put forth thirty years earlier during the Royal Commission, and thirty years after Tanya’s own uncle Harrison Day died in similar circumstances while in police custody, Tanya Day would still be alive right now. Thirty years after the Commissioner recommended that the “crime” of public intoxication be removed from the Criminal Code, yet another Aboriginal woman died in custody, with her only crime having a drunken kip on the train.

You can read more about the case and view the CCTV footage of Tanya here, but please be warned, it’s not an easy watch https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-06/cctv-footage-of-tanya-day-released-by-coroner/11471018

You can read the finding from the Coroner’s Court here https://www.coronerscourt.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-04/Finding%20-%20Tanya%20Day-%20COR%202017%206424%20-%20AMENDED%2017042020.pdf

The Department of Public Prosecutions decided not to proceed with a criminal case. You can read more about that decision here https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/no-charges-to-be-laid-against-police-after-death-of-indigenous-woman-tanya-day-20200826-p55pj8.html

The Facebook and Instagram accounts for #JusticeForTanyaDay can be found here https://www.facebook.com/Justicefortanyaday/ and here https://www.instagram.com/justicefortanyaday/?hl=en

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