Murder trial jury sees footage of accused stomping on partner's head

A 47-year-old man has faced trial in the Northern Territory Supreme Court this week for the alleged murder of his former partner in Katherine two years ago.

Lindsay Kennedy was charged with Colleen Bradshaw’s murder in November 2024, four months after her death at the Royal Darwin Hospital from a traumatic brain injury on July 17.

During the hearing this week, jurors were played footage from two CCTV cameras on Railway Terrace in Katherine’s town centre, showing Mr Kennedy punching Ms Bradshaw six days earlier on July 11, and stomping on her head after she fell to the ground.

The footage showed Mr Kennedy walking away twice, before returning to kick the 36-year-old in the head and chest, telling her to “get the f*** out of my life”.

He was then seen in the footage leaving her lying on the footpath, crying out in pain.

In her closing address this afternoon, Crown prosecutor Deborah Mandie told the jury they could infer Mr Kennedy’s murderous intent from his actions captured in the CCTV footage.

“First he runs intentionally, directly toward the deceased, unprovoked, with fist raised,” she said.

“The accused punches her in the head and face and then stomps, and then kicks her head twice more.

“This is not an impulsive, isolated action.”

In reply, defence barrister David Hallowes SC told the jury they could use “whatever adjectives you want” to describe his client’s actions.

But he said the fact of his assault against Ms Bradshaw, causing her death, did not establish his intent to kill her, and therefore his guilt for the crime of murder.

“She’s not dying at that time, you’d think if that’s what he wanted — her to die — he would keep on going until he achieved that,” he said.

Mr Hallowes told the jury a guilty verdict to the alternate offence of committing a violent act causing death would be most appropriate, while also accepting that negligent manslaughter might be proven.

Deceased put on bus to Darwin

The court heard Ms Bradshaw and her sister had called Triple Zero (000) four times in the days after the assault before she was eventually seen by hospital staff.

The audio from the first Triple Zero call was also played to the jury, with Ms Bradshaw heard telling the operator “I’m injured” and “I need to press charges”.

She was visited the next morning by police, but did not go to hospital against the advice of her sister, who called Triple Zero twice more that afternoon.

The court heard it was only after the fourth Triple Zero call on July 12, in which Ms Bradshaw said she felt “heavy in my head” and “it’s killing me”, that an ambulance was sent to take her to the Katherine District Hospital.

But given what the court heard were “unremarkable” vital signs, Ms Mandie said the focus was on an unrelated wound to Ms Bradshaw’s wrist that had become infected.

She was kept in hospital overnight before being put on a Greyhound bus to Darwin on July 13, where she presented to Royal Darwin Hospital and was again assessed and given antibiotics to treat her infected wound.

The following day, police attempted to take a statement from Ms Bradshaw, but were told she was too sick.

Ms Mandie told jurors it was another day later, early on July 15, after days of complaining of dizziness, blurred vision and vomiting, that Ms Bradshaw was assessed for “urgent cardiology concerns”.

By that afternoon she had been given a CT scan and placed in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

On July 16, her family was told that she would not survive and she was declared dead the next day.

In her testimony earlier this week, forensic pathologist Salona Roopan, who performed Ms Bradshaw’s autopsy, told the court she determined her cause of death to be “blunt force head trauma and consequences thereof”.

She said a blunt force trauma suffered by Ms Bradshaw approximately seven to fourteen days prior to her death had started a slow bleed inside her skull.

“Because it’s a closed space, the pressure rises because there’s more blood than there should be,” she said.

“And now there’s nowhere for that blood to go, so it starts pushing the brain in order to make space for itself to accumulate.”

The court heard that by the time she died, the bleeding around Ms Bradshaw’s brain had displaced it by almost a centimetre.

Justice Peter Barr is expected to give his instructions to jurors on Monday before they retire to begin their deliberations.