A past tenant of a Sydney home where a young carpenter was electrocuted in the roof has denied “lying on oath” to protect her brother who police allege “manipulated” cables to bypass the electricity meter.
Luke Bray, 24, died at the Carlton home in February 2017 while replacing wooden beams for the new owner.
He was found slumped over a beam, holding a frayed cable in his outstretched right hand with the copper wiring exposed. Resuscitation attempts made by his colleagues and paramedics were unsuccessful.
A police detective and veteran electrician on Thursday told an inquest the wiring was “extremely dangerous”, while a forensic pathologist said even if it had been touched with a flat hand, “you would most probably start gripping it involuntarily”.
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Mariam Hamade had lived at the home from 2013 until she was asked to vacate in October 2016.
At the fifth day of the inquest into Mr Bray’s death, Ms Hamade said she was “not aware” whether her brother Rabih Hamadi – who police allege was involved in the diversion of stolen electricity – had ever gone into the roof cavity.
“If he did go in, he would have told me. I’m not aware of it, I don’t know of it,” she told Deputy State Coroner Elaine Truscott on Friday through an Arabic interpreter.
She was asked by the coroner: “Your brother went into the roof of your house, and you know that, don’t you?”
“I did not see anyone entering. If I do say that I did see someone entering, then I would be lying,” Ms Hamade replied.
Counsel assisting the coroner, Sergeant Steve Kelly, said Ms Hamade was interviewed by police in June 2017 about the young man’s death and the “manipulation of some cables that had been found in the roof” of the house she had rented.
On Friday, she said she was truthful when she told officers she never had anyone do work in the roof, that “nobody cut the cable” to help reduce bills and she knew nothing about the cut cable or why it was left exposed.
Ms Hamade said she called her brother after the interview and went to his house to tell him what happened and the questions she had been asked.
Asked by Sgt Kelly what Mr Hamadi said in reply, she said: “He said, ‘It happens, you know, in accidents’.”
“I think … that I said to him that they are suspecting that someone has manipulated the cables,” she said.
“He did not say anything to me.
“I did ask the police that they are interviewing every single person, and I said to him that I think it’s just normal that they’re going to be interviewing everyone that resided in that house.”
Sgt Kelly asked: “Why did you feel the need to go and see your brother (Rabih)?”
“Because my brother is like, how do you say it, he is like my only family so anything that happens to me, he has to know and he has to look after me the same way I look after him,” Ms Hamade said.
Ms Truscott asked: “Does that include lying on oath for him?”
“No, it doesn’t. No, that’s not true,” Ms Hamade replied.
In his opening address on Monday, Sgt Kelly said Ms Hamade had gone onto a payment plan after receiving a $857.09 quarterly electricity bill for May to August 2014, using 37.85 kilowatts per hour.
But for May to August 2015, her average daily usage decreased by more than half to 16.08kWh, the inquest heard.
Ms Hamade on Friday testified this was due to changing from using three electric heaters in the winter months to one gas heater that she bought for $100 cash from a market at Bankstown.
She said she would fill up nine kilogram gas bottles at a nearby service station for $16 to $18.
Asked by Sgt Kelly if she was telling the truth when she told police that after receiving the “high bills” she stopped using electric heaters at the house, Ms Hamade said: “Correct.”
“I only use the gas,” she said.
In a statement tendered to the court, Ausgrid installation inspector Mark Krummer said the consumer mains at the home “were found to have been tampered with, where there was evidence of a previous illegal connection”.
“The insulation and sheathing had been removed and the conductor core exposed,” Mr Krummer wrote.
“A 2.5mm conductor had been terminated and the insulation was not reinstated.”
The purpose of the inquest is to determine the manner and cause of Mr Bray’s death and “if possible, who was responsible for creating the illegal bypass in the ceiling” of the Carlton property, Sgt Kelly said on Monday.
He said this included who installed the electrical bypass system and who removed it.
The inquest will resume on October 20 this year, on what would have been Mr Bray’s 28th birthday.
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