Witnesses have provided accounts of recent serious crimes in the southern region of the Northern Territory that contradict details made public by the NT Police, showing them to be more serious than reported, and with police seeming to suppress important details from the public.

In a media release published last Wednesday, police media manager Rob Cross said a 17-year-old boy, and an 18-year-old man had suffered significant head injuries after being in a group of people fighting with sticks outside an East Side home.

Two days later in another statement, Mr Cross said the 17-year-old was flown interstate for treatment and four people aged 15 to 19 had been arrested and charged with one count each of unlawfully causing serious harm and aggravated robbery.

However one witness to the assaults said it was not simply a fight with sticks, and gave an account of what they alleged to have seen.

“It was not a fight. It was an attack. It was savage. Brutal. Relentless,” they said.

“There were a lot of them. I would guess around a dozen. Male and female. The victims were being savagely beaten with weapons. I saw what I’d identify as a cricket bat, another witness said they had a machete.

“They were punched, kicked unconscious, bodies picked up and dropped into the street. They at least attempted to stuff one man into a rubbish bin.

“Hiding the truth of the dangers of in Alice Springs doesn’t help anyone. This is right in front of all the us living in this neighborhood. Too close for comfort.”

On the NT Police southern region Facebook page, under the post about the assaults, a comment by Jessica Fox Federerick – that appeared to be hidden or deleted by police – also called into question the police account.

“Y’all lie. It wasn’t sticks. This happened outside my friend’s house. It was baseball bats , machetes, and a long piece of glass,” she wrote.

“She saw the whole thing, it was right up against her house they were fighting.

“Literally the people of this town are getting scared and no one is doing anything about it.”

In another media release from the same day about an arrest over an alleged armed robbery with a gun, Superintendent Peter Dash said: “This was a one-off event and we do not expect any repercussions or similar incidents.”

However three independent sources told the NT Independent the same pharmacy was robbed at knife point in the weeks before that armed robbery. Police did not make information about the previous robbery public, but chose in the gun hold-up release to include the highly unusual line about it being a “one-off”, and that they “did not expect repercussions or similar incidents”.

Police may have meant that it was the first armed hold-up with a gun at the pharmacy, but it was unclear why the line was included, and seemed to suggest there had been no other armed hold-ups at the pharmacy.

Mr Cross did not respond to questions about why they included that line, and if they had purposely set out to deceive people about the crime more generally in the southern region.

He was also asked about who signed off on the information that went into the press releases and if NT Police were going to correct the record for the public about what police alleged happened in those crimes.