A man has been charged with sexually assaulting and murdering a five-year-old girl after she vanished from her outback home.<\/p>\n
Jefferson Lewis, 47, was apprehended by police in an Alice Springs town camp late on Thursday.<\/p>\n
He had been beaten unconscious by locals and was taken to hospital, where a riot erupted as angry residents demanded access and that he face immediate traditional justice.<\/p>\n
Lewis was flown to Darwin by the Northern Territory Police air wing for his own safety and that of hospital staff. \u00a0<\/p>\n
On Sunday, police announced Lewis had been charged with murdering Kumanjayi Little Baby, the name used after her death at her family’s request in line with cultural traditions.<\/p>\n
He also faced two charges of sexually assaulting her and was remanded in custody of an expected appearance in Darwin Local Court on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The arrest followed a massive bushland search for the girl and Lewis over a period of five days.<\/p>\n
The five-year-old’s body was found in bushland on Thursday, prompting an outpouring of grief and anger in the community.<\/p>\n
Lewis had been out of prison for only six days.<\/p>\n
Five emergency service personnel were injured in the initial riot and police vehicles and ambulances were damaged, including one police car torched.<\/p>\n
Police are tracking down the rioters to charge them over the violence.<\/p>\n
They are also looking for people they believed sheltered Lewis before his arrest.<\/p>\n
The family of the five-year-old girl and community elders have called for calm, asking people to let justice take its course.<\/p>\n
Takeaway alcohol sales were banned on Saturday as authorities attempt to stem further unrest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been charged with sexually assaulting and murdering a five-year-old girl after she vanished from her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-409621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}