Fatal high speed police chase - Unmarked SAAB 9-5 Aero vs Kawasaki as they just keep chasing and cause these crashes when will they learn to stop

Police mistakes led to fatal shooting

The shooting of an unarmed Sydney teenager by police during a 2010 hotel robbery could have been avoided if police followed proper procedures to contain and negotiate with suspects, a coroner has found.

Deputy NSW coroner Hugh Dillon found that the police operation which resulted in the death of Ali Antoni El Hafiane, 19, at the High Flyer Hotel in Condell Park was characterised by "cumulative, collective and systemic failures".

"If standard police procedure of containment and negotiation had been followed police would probably have captured Mr El Hafiane . . . without harm to them or risk to the police officers," he said.

Mr Dillon said members of the Robberies and Serious Crimes Squad had been investigating armed robberies in south-western Sydney for months before the November 22 shooting, and had the High Flyer under surveillance.

Nonetheless police were "taken by surprise" when Mr El Hafiane and another man armed with a machete burst into the hotel and demanded money from staff.

An undercover officer ran in after the young pair, who fled through another exit, where they faced two detectives who had just entered the hotel's beer garden.

"The two senior detectives were suddenly confronted by the two armed robbers running straight at them out of the hotel doors only metres away," Mr Dillon said, as about a dozen members of Mr El Hafiane's family watched.

"They assumed that the robbers were armed [with guns] and that they were desperate to get away and may have used their weapons to do so.

"[The two robbers] did not stop and the detectives outside fired on them."

The shooting, the coroner found, followed a series of errors by police during the ongoing investigation and on the night in question.

The police had wrongly assumed the two teenagers would follow the modus operandi of other recent robberies and wait until the hotel closed before entering, meaning police were unprepared when the robbery occurred at 8pm.

The police's tactical operations unit, which has expertise in dealing with armed robberies, had been told of the operation, but was not in place.

Planning for the operation, the coroner found, "did not include consideration of using undercover police to support the strike force in an overt role".

There was also a failure to develop contingency plans for "dealing with armed robbers if the strike force or undercover police detected them committing an armed robbery before the Tactical Operations Unit could be deployed".

When the two young men entered the hotel, officers did not order that a perimeter be set up to contain them, as required by police guidelines. Instead, three offices went in after them, and did not properly communicate this to their colleagues.

"It unnecessarily created a potentially very dangerous situation for the officers, the civilians inside the hotel, bar staff and, of course, the robbers," the coroner found.

While the police did not act with any malice, and perceived the two teenagers as "threats to their lives", they were "insufficiently prepared to deal with the situation that arose".

Mr Dillon made a series of recommendations for changes to police procedures and guidelines, including strict requirements for co-ordination of contingency planning.

He noted that NSW Police had already made changes to standard operating procedures after the shooting.

In a written statement, Detective Superintendent Luke Moore from the Robbery and Serious Crime Squad said the police force acknowleged the Coroner's comments and recommendations.

"As recognised by the Coroner, the Robbery & Serious Crime Squad has already implemented the majority of those recommendations," Superintendant Moore said.

"We are continuing to review the other recommendations in close consultation with other specialist units within the NSW Police Force."

Son saw mother's fatal fall on family skiing holiday

Christopher Thompson, 25, had stopped to wait for Sandra Thompson, 59, as they tackled a blue run together in the popular resort of Kitzbuhel in Austria’s Tyrol region.

He was standing just 30 metres away when he saw his "competent" mother catch her heel edge in the hard-packed snow and topple backwards at very low speed.

Mr Thompson unbuckled his own board and raced back up the slope to find her lying unconscious, an inquest heard.

He caught the attention of a passing slope worker, who called for an air ambulance to take her to a neurological intensive care unit at Innsbruck University Hospital.

Mrs Thompson, a former teacher from Chandler's Ford, Hants, was on holiday with her husband David, 58, a solicitor, her sons James, 30, and Christopher, and their girlfriends Meagan and Julie when the accident happened on February 6 last year.She had been snowboarding six times previously and was wearing a helmet, but the inquest heard it could not have saved her.

The whole family kept a vigil at her bedside for two days, but medics were unable to operate and the decision was made to turn off her life support machine after scans showed she was brain dead.

A post mortem examination revealed she had suffered swelling and a blood clot on the brain, known as a subdural haematoma, as a result of trauma to the head.

The type of fall she had was one that boarders of all levels of experience would suffer regularly, Christopher told Winchester Coroner's Court.

Most snowboarders do not put out their hands to break their fall for fear they will break their wrist or arm, and therefore often hit their head instead, he added.

Mrs Thompson’s husband said: "We're struggling to understand how it happened because it was an innocuous little fall, which makes it so hard to comprehend.

"She was always there for myself and the boys. The house feels so empty without her."

Verdict: accidental death.