Violent crowds clashed with police outside a hospital in a remote Australian outback town Thursday night as they demanded authorities hand over an accused child-killer.
Dramatic footage showed police officers dodging rocks and sticks while rioters smashed police cars and set a police van on fire. Officers can be seen shooting rounds of tear gas at the crowd, with some smoking canisters picked up and thrown back.
“Absolute anarchy” was how Northern Territory Police Commissioner Martin Dole described the scene in Alice Springs, considered the gateway to the Uluru, formerly Ayers Rock, in the desert heart of of the country.
Jefferson Lewis, 47, was arrested Thursday for the alleged murder of a five-year-old girl now known as Kumanjayi Little Baby, a pseudonym given by her family as a cultural measure among their Indigenous Warlpiri people to avoid the utterance of a deceased person’s name during a mourning period.
Lewis had been the subject of an intense manhunt in central Australia since Sunday night, after he was seen holding hands with the child in the hours before she was reported missing.
After a four days search that saw close cooperation between the Indigenous community and local police, the girl’s body was found by the edge of a river some five kilometres from where she was last seen.
It wasn’t police who tracked down Lewis, but an angry crowd, who officers found beating the accused killer in an act of “vigilante justice.”
“At the time of his apprehension by us, he was unconscious and he was in the process of being treated by St John’s Ambulance when they were set upon, as were the police,” Commissioner Dole said.
Lewis received “quite a severe beating” Dole said, before being taken to Alice Springs Hospital where a crowd of hundreds arrived to demand the alleged killer be turned over to them.
Warlpiri elder and family spokesperson called for calm in the wake of the violence.
“What has happened this week is not our way,” senior Yapa (Warlpiri) elder Robin Granites said in a statement.
“This man has been caught, thanks to community action, and we must now let justice take its course while we take the time to mourn Kumanjayi Little Baby and support our family.”
The relationship between Northern Territory (NT) Police and the Indigenous community is often tense. In 2025, a Coroner’s inquest found “clear evidence of entrenched systemic and structural racism within NT Police,” after Warlpiri man Kumanjayi Walker was shot by a police officer in 2019.
Speaking Friday, local Indigenous elder Michael Liddle said community solidarity in the face of the tragedy had been “undone” by the recent violence.
“I think bringing the word ‘payback’ into this scenario just fuels violence,” Liddle told journalists.
“There’s a system set up here, where there is a person in custody and the Western rules will deal with that person.”
Police said they intend to prosecute those involved.
“You will face the law just as Jefferson Lewis is facing the law,” Police Commissioner Dole said Friday.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese offered condolences to Kumanjayi Little Baby’s family, saying in a post on X Thursday, “No words can measure up to the immensity of the grief her family is going through. In their time of terrible loss, all Australians hold them in our hearts.”
Indigenous women and girls are more likely to be killed, raped or assaulted than non-Indigenous women, according to the findings of a federal senate inquiry into disappeared and murdered First Nations women.
The Albanese government responded to the 2024 report by acknowledging that “First Nations women and children experience disproportionately higher rates of homicide, family, domestic and sexual violence, child removal and incarceration, and poorer outcomes across health, housing, education and employment” and pledged to act upon a raft of recommendations including more stringent monitoring of potential offenders.
Lewis, who police said has a violent criminal history, was released from prison six days before Kumanjayi Little Baby’s disappearance on Sunday, having previously been charged with assault and domestic violence.
“This was a known perpetrator. There are questions about how this could happen so soon after his release from custody,” said independent Senator Lidia Thorpe, who is Indigenous.
In a statement, the mother of Kumanjayi Little Baby thanked those who had searched for her child.
“It is going to be so hard to live the rest of our lives without you,” she wrote.
