Police must pay for boy's death: mother

The mother of a boy killed by a car as he lay handcuffed on a road wants the police who arrested him to feel the terror of her son's final moments.

Andrew John Bornen, 16, died on February 7, 2009 soon after he was arrested in the Ipswich suburb of Brassall.

Bornen was handcuffed and lying face down on a busy road when an oncoming car struck and killed him.

Outside a coronial inquest into her son's death, Helen Donaldson said her primary objective was to ensure no one else died in similar circumstances.

"I'm actually hoping what happened to Andrew won't happen to anyone else again," she told reporters.

Ms Donaldson said the two officers who left her son handcuffed on the road had failed in their duty of care and must not escape punishment.

"They have made a mistake and they need to be punished for it."

She said she wanted the officers to experience the horror her son would have endured.

"What I'd like to do ... is put them on a road in the same situation that Andrew was and have a car run straight up towards them," she said.

"I want them to feel what happened to Andrew - not actually get run over but to be in that situation and be scared."

She said police must learn a lesson from the death of her son, the fourth of her eight children.

She said she did not hold the driver of the car responsible.

Queensland Police Union president Ian Leavers said the incident was tragic for all involved, including the two officers.

"Police officers, they're human, they were doing their job," he said.

"They feel for everyone involved in this. They are doing it tough as well."

Earlier, inside the Ipswich Magistrates Court, two witnesses told the inquest the boy may have been drunk in the hours before his death.

Steven White and Timothy Machen said they'd had verbal exchanges with an unidentified male believed to be Bornen.

The male appeared to be drunk and was swaying and carrying a baseball bat.

"He seemed to be drunk and disorderly. He seemed to have a baseball bat in one hand and a can in the other," Mr Machen told the court.

The witnesses said the man was not behaving aggressively.

Queensland Coroner Michael Barnes is presiding over the inquest, which is mandatory in death-in-custody cases. It's expected to run for the rest of the week.

12 July 2010

A classic example of where your life in the hands of police means absolutely NOTHING.

Australia is hurridly becoming a POLICE STATE, where the masses can be considered criminals before any proof.