A domestic violence police officer cried as she told an inquest into the death of a nine-month-old baby how she could have handled the file differently. The Deputy State Coroner is investigating possible police and department failings in the lead-up to a murder suicide at the Whispering Wall in the Barossa in 2021.
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00:00An officer of 17 years, Senior Constable Laurie Anne Harris was tasked with assessing the
00:07risk posed to nine-month-old Cobie Shepardson and her mother.
00:11She kept the threat to them as medium, before 38-year-old Henry Shepardson and his daughter
00:16were found dead at the bottom of the Barossa tourist attraction in a murder-suicide.
00:21The Deputy State Coroner is investigating whether Cobie's death was preventable.
00:25Through tears, Senior Constable Harris today told the inquest she would have reassessed
00:29the risk as high, had she read the file more thoroughly.
00:33What I didn't do was actually scroll down to the charges, and the charges were the threats
00:38to their lives.
00:39Had I read that, I would have then taken the time to read the statement from the previous
00:44occurrence which described it.
00:46Unfortunately, I didn't perceive that immediate risk to this family.
00:51The inquest previously heard Mr Shepardson had been charged with threatening Cobie's
00:55mother in 2020, but he pressured her to drop the charges after calling her 150 times from
01:01prison.
01:02The court was told those calls were not known to police, investigators, prosecutors or the
01:06magistrate's court, which varied Mr Shepardson's non-contact order the morning of the deaths.
01:12The inquest continues.