Broome cable tie incident: White tradie at the centre of shocking footage of Aboriginal kids bound with cable ties answers the question dividing Australia
The tradie who allegedly tied up a group of indigenous children with cable ties says his actions were not racially motivated and that he regrets the incident.
Shocking footage posted to Facebook showed a girl, six, and boys, seven and eight, in tears with their hands tied together outside a house in Broome, Western Australia, on Tuesday afternoon.
Air conditioning plant boss Mat Radelic, 45, was charged by Western Australia police on Wednesday with three counts of aggravated assault and will appear in court on March 25.
“It didn’t come from hatred or anything, it was just disappointment and then a little bit of anger.”
The tradie claimed that the children were committing crimes and that he had lost thousands of dollars to juvenile crime. He is considering leaving Broome.
Margaret, 6, and Stuart, 7, (pictured) were in distress and crying for their mother
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.’
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.
Stuart, seven, (pictured) has since had a nightmare and has a scratch on his hand after the incident
Margaret, six, (pictured) was tied up with her brother for about an hour on a 33 degree day
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.
A woman, who is related to the little girl and seven-year-old boy, streamed the shocking ordeal live and said the tradie refused to let them go.
“When we tried to walk in to get them, he pushed me and my mother out of the garden,” she told the Western Australian newspaper earlier on Wednesday.
“When we stopped there, and when that guy pushed me out of the fence… the little (eight-year-old) boy broke the zip ties with his hands and then jumped over the fence and ran down. away.
“It was just disturbing, we were so angry because (the tradie) just yelled at him and told him to let them go, but he just wouldn’t listen to us.”
The children’s mother, Rowena, said she begged the tradie to let her children go but was afraid of his size
An earlier photo on Facebook showed a third child tied up who later managed to escape (pictured)
The family member said Radelic kept saying he was “waiting for the police to come.”
She said one of the children also claimed the man told them he would “hit them with a big stick.”
Paramedics from St John Ambulance assessed the children, who have now been reunited with their families.
After officers arrived at the property, Radelic was taken into custody and interviewed.
His company’s website was taken offline after it was bombarded with one-star Google reviews following the incident, and the business phone has been disabled.
Daily Mail Australia understands the house where the alleged incident occurred recently went up for sale.
He was later charged and granted bail to appear at Broome Magistrates Court on March 25.