The situation
Real talk: the vibes are absolutely off at the Victorian coroner’s court this week. An inquest into the 2023 death of 58-year-old John Makai revealed that he passed away from a severe, untreated head injury after being held in a police cell for five hours.
So, here is how we got here. Makai, a father of 10, was allegedly punched in the head by his son during a night out in Sunbury. An ambulance was initially called but was cancelled. When police arrived at the house, they watched Makai struggle to stand and collapse into a bookcase. He was then hauled into a divisional van to be taken to the Broadmeadows station.
The breakdown
The footage shown in court is highkey hard to watch. When they arrived at the station, Makai couldn't even stand on his own. Officers had to drag him by his legs, and his head reportedly hit the floor and walls of the van during the process. Once in the cell, he was placed in a 'coma position'—a fancy way of saying he was completely unresponsive.
Despite the fact that Makai didn't respond to anything, officers repeatedly told dispatchers he was just in a 'deep sleep' due to being drunk. Lowkey, they were ignoring the reality of the situation: he was suffering from a massive brain bleed. To make matters worse, a systemic L occurred at Triple Zero Victoria, where a request for an ambulance was incorrectly cancelled, meaning no paramedics arrived for hours. It wasn't until police finally tried to get a response from him hours later that they realized he wasn't just sleeping—he was unresponsive.
The fallout
During the inquest, a lawyer for the Victoria Police Chief Commissioner, Mike Bush, issued an apology, admitting the care Makai received wasn't at the standard the community is entitled to expect. They acknowledged that officers failed to complete medical checklists, failed to notice his condition deteriorating, and didn't perform the checks they claimed they were doing.
While the police are offering condolences, they've said it's unclear if better care would have changed the 'tragic outcome.' Disciplinary actions have been taken against some officers, but the inquest is just getting started to see where the system truly failed.
Why it matters
This isn't just a random L; it’s a massive institutional failure. A man with a non-survivable brain trauma was treated like a drunk person in a cell rather than a patient needing immediate medical intervention. The inquest is going to be digging into whether the state's policies were broken, and honestly, the plot thickens on whether any of this could have been avoided with a simple trip to the hospital.
