A police officer’s cursing just before he tasered an elderly woman who was holding a knife showed the aged-care resident was not a threat but that he was simply fed up with the situation, a jury has heard.
Dramatic footage of the incident taken from the nursing home’s CCTV and police bodyworn cameras has been shown at a NSW supreme court manslaughter trial for Sen Const Kristian White.
In the clips, the 34-year-old officer was heard saying “nah, bugger it” before shooting 95-year-old Clare Nowland in the torso with the electrical barbs.
White has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter.
“What the accused said before he fired the Taser was completely inconsistent with it being to prevent an imminent violent confrontation,” crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC told the jury on Tuesday during closing submissions.
“‘Nah, bugger it’. You might understand that to mean he was fed up, impatient, not prepared to wait any longer.”
White discharged his stun gun at Nowland in a treatment room at Yallambee Lodge aged care home in the southern NSW town of Cooma during the early hours of 17 May 2023.
The great-grandmother, who had symptoms of dementia and was holding a steak knife at the time, fell backwards and hit her head before dying a week later in hospital.
White argued he was justified in firing the weapon despite only one minute passing after he encountered her in the treatment room.
He claimed he needed to protect others in the area from injury.
But no reasonable person would have thought a violent confrontation was imminent because of Nowland’s speed as it took her one minute to slowly shuffle forward a metre before she was tasered, Hatfield said.
She was also two or three metres away from White, his police partner, two paramedics and a registered nurse.
“Who could she have injured at that moment? No one,” Hatfield said.
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While the law allowed police officers to use reasonable force in their duties, this was not what occurred, the prosecutor argued.
White has been accused of manslaughter through criminal negligence by breaching the duty of care owed to Nowland and by committing an unlawful and dangerous act.
Jurors will have to consider whether the use of force was reasonable or not.
They will not have to determine whether the tasering was a breach of police policies or procedures.
“You might think in this case that it plainly was but that’s not the issue here,” Hatfield said.
The trial continues.
