Jurors shown video of attack on Colleen Bradshaw
The trial of 47-year-old Lindsay Kennedy, who is accused of murdering his former partner Colleen Bradshaw in the town of Katherine, is continuing in the Supreme Court of Australia’s Northern Territory. As reported by ABC News Australia, jurors were shown surveillance camera footage capturing an attack on the 36-year-old woman six days before her death.
Surveillance camera footage
Video from two cameras on Railway Terrace in central Katherine, recorded on July 11, 2024, shows Kennedy striking Bradshaw. After she fell to the ground, he allegedly stepped on her head.
The footage also shows the man walking away from Bradshaw twice, returning and kicking her in the head and chest. He eventually left the woman on the pavement, where she screamed in pain.
In her closing address, prosecutor Deborah Mendy told jurors that they could infer the defendant’s intent to kill Bradshaw from his actions in the footage. According to her, the attack was not an impulsive or isolated act.
Kennedy’s defence counsel, David Gallows SC, said that the attack that caused Bradshaw’s death did not in itself prove an intention to kill her. The defence argued that a more appropriate verdict would be guilty of the alternative offence of committing a violent act causing death. Gallows also suggested that negligent homicide could be proven.
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Calls for help and death
The court heard that after the attack, Bradshaw and her sister called the 000 emergency number four times. During the first call, Bradshaw told the operator that she was injured and wanted to make a report.
Police visited her the following morning, but she did not go to hospital despite her sister’s advice. An ambulance was dispatched only after the fourth call on July 12, when Bradshaw complained of heaviness in her head and severe pain. She was taken to Katherine District Hospital. The prosecutor told the court that, with her vital signs unchanged, medical staff at that time focused on an infected wrist wound unrelated to the attack.
On July 13, Bradshaw was sent by Greyhound bus to Darwin, where she was examined again at Royal Darwin Hospital and prescribed antibiotics. After complaining of dizziness, blurred vision and vomiting, she underwent a CT scan on July 15 and was transferred to the intensive care unit.
Forensic expert Salona Rupan determined that the cause of death was blunt head trauma and its consequences. According to her testimony, the injury, sustained approximately 7–14 days before death, caused a slow intracranial bleed. At the time of her death on July 17, 2024, the haemorrhage had shifted the brain by almost one centimetre. Justice Peter Barr is due to instruct the jury on Monday, after which they will begin deliberating on a verdict.
