Police in Australia\u2019s Northern Territory said on Sunday they had charged a man with murdering an Indigenous girl, days \u200cafter the five-year-old\u2019s death sparked violent clashes in an outback town.<\/p>\n
Jefferson Lewis (47) was also charged with two other offences, \u200bwhich cannot be publicly disclosed for legal reasons, over the death of Kumanjayi Little Baby, the name by which the victim is known in line with Indigenous custom, police said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a horrific event and \u200ba horrific set of circumstances and our thoughts remain strongly with the family,\u201d Northern Territory Police Commissioner Martin Dole said in \u2060televised remarks from Alice Springs.<\/p>\n
Lewis, who had presented himself to one of the \u200ccamps \u200con \u200bthe outskirts of the outback town, was charged on Saturday evening and will appear in court in the territory\u2019s capital, Darwin, on Tuesday, police \u2060said.<\/p>\n
The girl\u2019s killing and subsequent \u200bcapture of the suspect, after he was found and \u200bbeaten unconscious by locals, sparked protests by roughly 400 Indigenous people near Alice Springs late on \u200cThursday. Lewis has past convictions for physical assault \u200band had recently been released from prison.<\/p>\n
Some demonstrators threw projectiles and lit fires, \u2060injuring a number of police officers and \u2060medical workers and \u200bdamaging police vehicles, ambulances and fire trucks. Members of the crowd were seen in televised footage calling for payback \u2013 traditional, mostly physical, punishment in Aboriginal societies.<\/p>\n
Police used tear gas to disperse the protesters, while prime minister Anthony Albanese, local officials and a spokesperson for the victim\u2019s family appealed for calm.<\/p>\n
Australia has struggled for decades to reconcile with its Indigenous people, who have inhabited the land for some 50,000 years but were marginalised \u200cby British colonial rule. \u2060Indigenous Australians account for 3.8 per cent of the population and face disadvantages including discrimination, poor health and education outcomes and high incarceration rates.<\/p>\n
Thousands, including the victim and her family, \u200clive in camp communities where housing and services are often inadequate. A fifth of Alice Springs citizens are Indigenous.<\/p>\n
The \u200bvictim\u2019s body was located on Thursday by one of hundreds of \u200bpeople searching the dense bushland around the town, a popular tourist destination that has previously had problems with alcohol-fuelled violence. \u2013 Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police in Australia\u2019s Northern Territory said on Sunday they had charged a man with murdering an Indigenous girl,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[171471,171472,21659,171473,171474,37784,29161,70061,10179,36601,11223,26444,11226,171475,6630,23302,229,8954,171476,14833,171477,16906,106019,4530,171478,4644,171479,66153,6503,38472,9447,46131,8569,61435,3355,42,171480,77542,14832,82815,171481,2091,171482,5907,17536,171483,171484,43,38256,70637,19784,171485,3185,57364,47139,171486,6509,23553,16620,3589,9333,171487,713,23292,30220,171488,40,38,41,39,19681,3186,14825,90,812,171489,171490,171491,5906,16878,48475],"class_list":["post-430239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-171471","tag-171472","tag-21659","tag-171473","tag-47th","tag-a","tag-after","tag-also","tag-american","tag-are","tag-as","tag-at","tag-been","tag-businessperson","tag-c","tag-candidate","tag-chinese","tag-college","tag-contested","tag-democratic","tag-depicting","tag-display","tag-dolls","tag-donald","tag-elected","tag-elections","tag-electoral","tag-federation","tag-female","tag-following","tag-former","tag-gift","tag-harris","tag-has","tag-having","tag-headlines","tag-j","tag-jinping","tag-kamala","tag-known","tag-l","tag-male","tag-matryoshka","tag-more","tag-moscow","tag-necessary","tag-nesting","tag-news","tag-nov","tag-november","tag-personality","tag-politician","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-putin","tag-r","tag-race","tag-reactions","tag-republican","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-secured","tag-shop","tag-states","tag-than","tag-tightly","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-traditional","tag-trump","tag-united","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-vice","tag-vladimir","tag-votes","tag-with","tag-wooden","tag-xi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}