MOTHER OF TRAGIC TEEN TYLER CASSIDY RELIEVED OVER CORONER'S RULING

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• published: 23 Nov 2011
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There have been 36 days of hearings into the police shooting of her 15-year-old son, 63 witnesses, 21 lawyers and almost 4500 pages of transcript. Little is left that hasn't been said. Just a few words remain from a mother living with an awful emptiness. ``He was only a child and had much to live for and I miss him terribly,'' solicitor Nick O'Bryan says, reading Shani's statement to a battery of cameras as she stands beside him. For the final chapters in Tyler's short life and violent death, the spacious, harshly-lit, Coroners Court is over-full. About 30 people stand against the walls: friends, the curious, Homicide cops in matching ties. Seats are set aside for the Cassidy family and, as an afterthought, for the four police who responded to at least five 000 calls about Tyler's rampage, one from the boy himself. Sen-Constable Antonia Ferrante, the only one of the four who didn't fire her weapon, looks over at the designated-family seats then sits as far away from them as possible. Hair pulled back tight, she looks unfailingly forward at Coroner Jennifer Coate and, beside her, Sen-Constable Richard Blundell and Sgt Colin Dods do the same. The police trio barely speak. They don't look 3m across to Mrs Cassidy and she doesn't look at them. Instead Mrs Cassidy, flanked by family, stares straight ahead as her son's shooting is broken down into carefully-worded observations and recommendations. Sometimes she closes her eyes and lets the words wash over her. Other times she tilts her head and looks spent. The Coroner notes Tyler's "tragically irrational'' conduct, history of extreme anger and the `"poor boy's'' inner despair. But it is more about what isn't said, what isn't explicable after all the thousands of words. "We are not going to find that without (Tyler) here to answer the questions,'' Judge Coate says. She does not explain how two soakdowns with capsicum spray and shots to the legs didn't stop the 15-year-old, doesn't conclude which officer fired the fatal shot that tore into his chest just above his heart. Instead she says mental health systems failed Tyler, and police training. She says "the horror and tragedy of what is known as youth suicide is sadly familiar to coroners'' but adds that Tyler was too emotionally-wrenched for his death to be considered such. Judge Coate picks key points out of a finding that says what happened but can't fully explain why. She ends the inquest and leaves 131 pages to be analysed, dissected and, finally, condensed outside court into a mother's few final words. "Tyler's death at the age 15 by police shooting is a tragedy,'' Mrs Cassidy says through her lawyer. "I'm relieved that that Coroner found Tyler did not deliberately take his life,'' he continues for her, but it distresses me greatly that on the night of his death Tyler was in crisis and needed help. Instead he was shot.'' Mrs Cassidy's statement ends with a hope for other mums with troubled kids. "I'll alway regard Tyler's death as preventable,'' she says. "I hope that the Coroner's recommendations are quickly adopted and can help provide Victoria Police and its officers with better conflict resolution skills so that another life is not lost. "I would not want any family to go through what we have endured.'' - 23 November 2011.