Railway worker recalls 'horrific injuries' after finding teen dead on tracks

Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains the name and images of an Indigenous person who has died.

Former assistant station master Glenn Bryant appeared in the witness box for the second day of the inquest into the death of 17-year-old Gomeroi teenager Mark Anthony Haines more than three decades ago.

Mr Bryant was the first person to reach Mark's body after a train passed over it on the morning of January 16, 1988, on the railway line between Warral Road and Werris Creek Road.

The inquest heard Mr Bryant was working at the West Tamworth station when he was advised the train, which had departed at 5:50amz, had driven over a body just before the Bithramere Road level crossing.

Mr Bryant said the absence of "flowing" blood from Mark's head injury, and the lack of bone, skull and hair fragments on the track had led him to believe the "head injury was not contributed to by the train".

"The injuries he sustained were horrific but they were not sustained by the train," Mr Bryant said.

When he first saw Mark's body laying between the tracks, Mr Bryant told the inquest he noticed how clean the teenager's blue and white shoes were.

Mr Bryant said his own shoes and trousers were covered with red mud, which he had picked up from walking towards the railway line towards Mark's body.

"There was a fair bit of mud on my boots that came off onto my trousers," Mr Bryant said.

"He [Mark] would not have walked there [train tracks] otherwise his shoes would have not been as clean as they were."

The inquest, opened for the second time on April 8, 2024, at the Tamworth Court House, 36 years after an original three-day inquest returned an open finding about how Mark ended up on the tracks.

The fresh inquest previously heard police took no photographs of Mark's body before it was moved, and the train which police believed struck the teenager was not seized for forensic examination.

Mark's clothing was also not formally seized by police.

Mr Bryant told the court he remained at the scene while two police officers and two paramedics attended.

He helped paramedics load Mark's body into an ambulance, and "glanced" at the front of the train before it was given approval to continue towards Werris Creek.

The inquest previously heard there was only one hour and four minutes between when Mark's body was found and when it was moved to be taken to Tamworth hospital.

Mr Bryant said he remembered the two police officers appearing to be "in a hurry" at the scene.

"They just seemed to rush through it," he said.

Mr Bryant gave a statement to police in the days after Mark's death and was called to give evidence at the original inquest.

The court heard Mr Bryant gave evidence to the inquest a second time after he asked to provide another statement to police.

While giving evidence in the current inquest, Mr Bryant said he was "deadly positive" there was a white towel placed under Mark's head when he arrived at the scene.

"I've always maintained it was a white towel, that was one of the things that stuck in my mind," Mr Bryant said.

"There was some blood on the towel because he had been laying on it."

A barrister representing three police officers involved in the inquest asked Mr Bryant why the towel under Mark's head hadn't been included in either of his original statements.

He said Mr Bryant had included a "very detailed" account of what he witnessed at the scene, but had never mentioned a towel under Mark's head.

The barrister also asked Mr Bryant why he had not told police he had a "different opinion" about Mark being killed as a result of the train striking him.

"It's not my place to challenge the police or give them my opinion," Mr Bryant said.

The inquest will continue before Deputy State Coroner Harriet Grahame on Wednesday.