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 Saturday night, after he was seen holding hands with the child in the hours before she was reported missing.
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