Medical experts have told the Northern Territory coroner that 22-month-old Ebony Thompson, whose death in 2023 trigger this week’s coronial inquest, likely died after being caught by the neck in a common pool fence, at her local childcare centre. Witness evidence in the inquest finished today, with the actions and procedures of the childcare centre staff, defended by child safety experts.
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00:00It was their baby daughter's favourite colour, and this week the uniform for a family searching
00:08for answers.
00:10Ebony Thompson died when her life support was switched off in September 2023, days after
00:16she was found unconscious and not breathing in the playground of this childcare centre
00:21in Darwin's rural area.
00:24That's all I can be grateful for at this stage, is that we actually got that time to sit with
00:29her and everyone read her stories and said goodbye.
00:33This week the coroner heard that in the five to ten minutes Ebony was out of sight of staff,
00:38it would have taken just five seconds for her to lose consciousness, the NT's former
00:43chief forensic pathologist ruling out a medical episode in evidence today, saying it was much
00:49more likely the toddler's small neck became caught in the loop-topped fencing around the
00:54playground's chook pen.
00:57In the moment it was a very horrific, traumatic experience.
01:00I'd never seen a toddler like that, ever.
01:03I felt it was so far past my expertise.
01:05Despite being trained in CPR, staff rushed the girl across the road to the local clinic,
01:11by which time it was too late, the doctor on duty asking why staff had wasted precious
01:17seconds.
01:18What confused me was that if all the staff were trained in CPR, why it wasn't initiated
01:24where she was found?
01:25And then later on, I could have been called.
01:28Why was the child carried here all the way, wasting time?
01:32A child safety expert defending the worker's response as a natural reaction to a traumatic
01:37event.
01:39You can do all the CPR training in the world, but at the moment when you're confronted
01:43with that situation, you might not have the capacity to do it.
01:46It may be months before the coroner releases her formal findings into Ebony Thompson's
01:52But for now, her friends and family might take some small comfort from the forensic
01:57accounts they heard in court this week.