South Australian police are investigating a death at a regional hospital yesterday, after Liberal Senator Kerrynne Liddle said an elderly person had died during the Telstra outage.
In a statement, SA Police said they attended Senator Liddle’s office and spoke to her and her staff on Thursday.

“As a result, contact was subsequently made with the family of an individual who died at a regional hospital on Wednesday 8 July,” they said.
“Police were not notified of the death.
SA Health directed ABC enquiries about the matter to SA Police, who declined to comment further.
No additional information about the death — including when and where it occurred, and the age and gender of the person — has been publicly released.
“We have no further information about this matter than what has been provided,” police said.
In a statement, Telstra said it was aware that police were investigating “the death of a person yesterday”, and that it would help provide “any information that may assist in establishing the facts”.

“We are working closely with South Australia Police to support their investigation and to establish whether there is any connection between this matter and yesterday’s network outage,” it said.
“Our thoughts are with the person’s family and loved ones at this difficult time.”
In a post to social media on Wednesday night, Senator Liddle said her office had received “a report of a tragic death following an apparent failure to connect to Triple Zero”.
“This death of an elderly South Australian represents a devastating failure for their family. Our thoughts are with them. No Australian should ever be unable to connect to Triple Zero when their life depends on it,” Senator Liddle wrote.
In an initial response to the senator’s post, SA Police said, in the comments section, that it was “not aware of any death in South Australia today as a result of the Telstra nationwide outage”.

The social media post prompted public comments from the senator, police, SA Police Minister Michael Brown and Attorney-General Kyam Maher, who earlier today told 891 ABC Adelaide the SA Ambulance Service had also looked through its records and could not find any death related to the outage.

Mr Maher had described the senator’s post as “deeply irresponsible”, while Police Minister Michael Brown responded in similar vein.
“When we’re talking about the Triple Zero outage, people are right to be concerned and angry about what happened yesterday, but to have it blown out of proportion and all sorts of wild, speculative information put out publicly I think is downright dangerous,” he said.
More on the Telstra outage
But Senator Liddle doubled down and also hit back at the SA government.
“I am disappointed that the SA Minister for Police chose to front the media and question my integrity in this process,” she said in a statement.
Senator Liddle reiterated that her office had “received a report that an elderly South Australian had died during the Telstra network outage”.
“After contact from Telstra, media and relevant authorities, my office advised the family to reach out to SAPOL directly. The grieving family did that today,” she said.

Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-09/death-on-day-of-telstra-outage-investigated-by-sa-police/106897944