The tasering of a 95-year-old woman was never meant to lead to her death but was done to prevent others from being stabbed, the police officer who fired the weapon has told a jury.
Senior Constable Kristian White discharged his stun gun at Clare Nowland in a treatment room at Yallambee Lodge aged-care home in the southern NSW town of Cooma during the early hours of May 17, 2023.
The great-grandmother, who had symptoms of dementia and was holding a steak knife at the time, fell backwards, hitting her head, and died a week later in hospital.
As White’s trial entered its second week on Monday, the 34-year-old explained from the witness box that he only intended to incapacitate the aged-care resident and disarm her of the bladed weapon.
‘I’m upset and devastated by it,’ he told the NSW Supreme Court.
‘I never intended for her to be injured by it at all.’
The senior constable pointed the stun gun at Mrs Nowland as she shuffled forwards out of the treatment room, ignoring four of his verbal warnings and the loud electrical crackles of the weapon’s warning arc.
White argued he tried to give the 95-year-old every opportunity to drop the knife.
He eventually said ‘nah, bugger it’ before firing the weapon because it was clear the incident – during which Mrs Nowland had been armed with the knife for several hours – was not going to be resolved without force.
‘I didn’t want to have to tase Clare but I was also weighing up the safety of everyone present,’ White told the jury.
The 95-year-old had shown an intention to use the knife by raising it towards anyone who approached. Walking away and letting her wander elsewhere in the facility would have been a gamble that put more people at risk, the officer said.
‘Our job is to maintain the peace,’ he said under questioning from his defence barrister, Troy Edwards SC.
‘Letting her wander the corridors armed with a knife would definitely in my mind be a breach of that peace.’
White said he thought the tasering was justified as it met the exceptional criteria test required by police for the use of the weapon on an elderly person.
But he admitted he did not know of this test until after the incident, when his partner, then acting Sergeant Jessica Pank, showed him the police procedures.
White is due to undergo a grilling by crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC as the trial continues.
The officer pleaded not guilty to manslaughter after being accused of criminal negligence or conducting an unlawful and dangerous act that led to the unlawful killing of Mrs Nowland.