‘Someone hurt him’: teen’s schoolmates front inquest
Keira Jenkins |
After the body of an Aboriginal teenager was found on the train tracks rumours swirled around a regional town about how he may have ended up there.
It was the early morning of January 16, 1988 when Gomeroi teenager Mark Haines was found dead on the tracks outside Tamworth in NSW.
Police found a stolen white Torana next to the rail line, which appeared to have crashed and rolled.
Mr Haines’ family never believed the findings of an initial police investigation, which ruled the 17-year-old had lain on the tracks either deliberately or in a dazed state after a car crash.
A coroner handed down an open finding after an inquest in 1988 and 1989.
Mr Haines’ family, led by his uncle Don Craigie, has campaigned for decades to re-examine the circumstances of his death, and a fresh inquest began in April 2024.
Jason Cupitt told the latest inquest in Sydney there had always been “hearsay” around Tamworth about what happened to Mr Haines.
Mr Cupitt went to school with Mr Haines and said he’d overheard rumours of a car race, which had ended in an accident.
It was when Mr Cupitt watched a documentary about Mr Haines’ death that he recalled seeing a white Torana in the early hours of a Saturday morning.
He said he’d been riding his bicycle home from a friend’s house between 3 and 3.30am, when he said he saw Glenn Mannion driving the car.
“It nearly run me over,” he told the inquest on Monday.
Mr Cupitt said Mr Mannion was hanging out the driver’s window of the car, yelling out at him to get off the road.
Mr Mannion has previously denied any involvement in Mr Haines’ death, telling the inquest in March he had no idea how he ended up on the tracks.
Liatt Haynes also recalled seeing Mr Haines in a car the night he died, but could not be sure about the make and colour.
Ms Haynes, who went to school with Mr Haines, told the inquest she thought the car was white or cream and square shaped.
Ms Haynes said she was walking between the leagues club and workers club in Tamworth when Mr Haines drove past in a car, yelling out the rear passenger window to the group she was with.
“We thought we’d see him later that night but we didn’t,” she said.
When asked what she thought happened to Mark Haines, Ms Haynes said she believed it was “foul play”.
“Someone hurt him and someone laid him on the tracks,” she said.
“He had a beautiful girlfriend and he had a great friends group so it was really odd.”
While Ms Haynes said she didn’t know for sure what happened to Mr Haines, she said she wished she did, so his family could finally have answers.
In ending the hearing coroner Harriet Grahame reminded the public that there is a reward of $1 million for information into Mr Haines’ death.
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