Footy star Latrell Mitchell has called on authorities to throw the book at a Western Australian tradie after he allegedly tied up three young Indigenous children with cable ties.
Disturbing footage of the incident that took place in Broome emerged on Thursday, winning sympathy from weary locals in a city plagued by youth crime.
The video showed images of primary school-aged children with their hands tied together by black cable ties.
Burly local trader Mat Radelic, 45, was seen standing with the crying children – a girl and two boys aged six, seven and eight – outside a house in Conkerberry Road, Cable Beach.
Radelic, who runs a local air conditioning company, stood next to the clearly distressed and wailing children until police officers arrived to arrest him.
Latrell Mitchell has urged authorities to ‘throw the book at a Broome tradie’
The footy star compared Thursday’s disturbing scenes to those of the 1900s
Mitchell has defended the rights of indigenous people and uses his profile to send his message
Initially called to investigate the children’s alleged offending, police later charged the 45-year-old man with three counts of aggravated assault.
It is believed Radelic caught the three children – and a fourth, a boy who escaped – swimming in a backyard pool on a 33°C day. In the footage he claimed it was the sixth time this had happened.
He has been widely condemned by the public for overreacting and scaring the children after the footage went viral.
One of those dissenting voices is Mitchell, who called for the 45-year-old to be punished.
“Throw the book at him for doing this to our babies,” he posted in a now-deleted Instagram story.
He also shared side-by-side images of the Broome incident with an infamous photo of Indigenous people chained in Wyndham Prison by British colonists in the early 20th century.
The two photos were captioned “2024” and “1902.”
Rowena, mother of little Stuart, seven, and Margaret, six, said the man’s alleged actions were a ‘disgrace’ and she desperately asked him if he had any children of his own to consider how they might find themselves in a similar situation would feel.
‘When I stood behind a fence and saw my children tied up like that, it was an emotion of ‘what can I do?’ we just had to wait for the police,” Rowena told A Current Affair.
‘He had no feeling or anything for my children who were there crying. My boy was crying for water and I couldn’t even give him water.’
Two young Indigenous children were seen tied to cables by a Western Australian tradie
Rowena, who struggled to speak through tears, said she begged Radelic to release her children but was “scared” of him because of his size.
The distraught mother said her son had had a nightmare and also had a ‘scratch on the right side of his hand’.
She also questioned possible double standards in the legal system.
“If it was the other way around, if an Aboriginal man held three white children, and said to the families, ‘You can wait until the police come. If he goes to court, the Aboriginal man would…’be gone,’ she said.
“They wouldn’t even let him out of jail. He would have remained in prison. They wouldn’t give him bail. They might have sent him away for kidnapping.”
In video footage obtained exclusively by Daily Mail Australia, Radelic can be heard complaining to the person recording him: “They are on my property.
“It’s not the first time – six times (this has happened),” he claimed.
However, Rowena told the program that it was not actually the man’s property.
Rod Wilde, acting deputy commissioner of the regional police, said a neighbor called police at 1.35pm on Tuesday after seeing the children swimming in an ‘unoccupied’ pool.
“About ten minutes later, police received a call from a male subject who (reportedly) said he had restrained three children for causing damage in that backyard,” Commissioner Wilde said.
“Police located two children at that time – one had left – who were (allegedly) tied up with cables in that property.”
Police will allege a fourth boy had also been in the pool but managed to flee and alerted family members to what was happening.