The day was already hot as the legal teams wheeled their briefcases across bricks and concrete tiles towards the Northern Territory Supreme Court.
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains an image of a person who has died, used with the permission of their family.
Among them was Constable Zachary Rolfe, who was walking with the leader of the local police union and about to stand trial for murder. In front, a wall of media, waiting for the historic case to begin.
"It's taken a while," the 30-year-old officer told reporters.
"We've been trying to get it started for over two years, so, [it's] good to finally get it started."
A similar thing was said by Warlpiri elders who had travelled to Darwin from the community of Yuendumu, the setting of events that would be interrogated over the coming weeks.
"It's been two years. It's been two solid years," Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves said as he, too, addressed a media scrum on day one.
"We are still hurting. We are still murrumurru — hurting every day."
The fatal shooting of Yuendumu teenager Kumanjayi Walker during an attempted arrest and the murder charge laid against Constable Rolfe days later made headlines around the world in November 2019.
The spotlight returned this week as prosecutors laid out their case against the young officer and the constable's defence lawyers outlined their reply.
Constable Rolfe has pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder, as well as to the alternative charges of manslaughter and engaging in a violent act causing death.
The prosecution and defence open their arguments
The first week of evidence saw the microscope focused on the handling of two attempts to arrest Mr Walker, which took place three days apart.
It was during the second attempt, which took place at a home in Yuendumu as the sun set, that Mr Walker stabbed Constable Rolfe in the shoulder with a pair of medical scissors, and the officer aimed his semi-automatic gun and fired three shots.
Shaky footage from officers' body-worn cameras was played to the jury not long after they were empanelled.
Prosecutors opened their case by telling jurors the second and third of the shots were intended to kill or at least seriously harm the teenager.
Mr Walker was being restrained by Constable Rolfe's partner when those shots were fired, the prosecution alleged, and they were not legally justified.
But defence barrister David Edwardson QC told the court Mr Walker was not under control and was trying to attack Constable Adam Eberl.
The evidence would show, Mr Edwardson said, that Constable Rolfe had acted in self-defence and in good faith, in the reasonable performance of his duties and — he stressed — in line with his training.
In his opening address, Mr Edwardson introduced jurors to a phrase he said would "loom large" throughout the trial.
"In other words, where a police officer is confronted with an edged weapon, the appropriate response is to draw your weapon and be prepared to use it."
Two arrest attempts, two different outcomes
The earlier arrest attempt, also in a home in Yuendumu, had been made by locally based officers, unlike Constable Rolfe, who had deployed from Alice Springs.
Mr Walker was in breach of the conditions of a suspended sentence, which required him to stay at an alcohol rehabilitation in Alice Springs.
More body-worn-camera footage jurors watched showed two local senior constables, Chris Hand and Lanyon Smith, enter the house and open a bedroom door, from which Mr Walker emerges with an axe.
He threatens the officers with the single-handed hatchet, charging past them and sprinting from the house.
Neither officer drew their firearm.
Both told the court they knew of the adage "edged weapon equals gun" but they did not draw their weapons for various reasons, including that they did not believe the 19-year-old truly wanted to harm them.
Constable Hand said officers were trained that they could draw their gun if a hostile target was within six metres, but they could choose not to.
Under cross-examination, both officers conceded they did not expect to be attacked, and that Constable Hand was aware of some of Mr Walker's criminal history but not that he had previously assaulted police or had what Mr Edwardson called a "predisposition to violence".
When the officers returned to the house from which Mr Walker fled, body-worn-camera footage captured Constable Hand telling Lottie Robertson, the grandmother of Mr Walker's partner: "Next time [Mr Walker] does that, he might get shot."
The three words that followed on the tape were picked apart by defence counsel.
In cross-examination, Mr Edwardson put it to Constable Hand that his warning suggested there was always the prospect of a firearm being deployed during the first arrest attempt.
Constable Hand: In Alice Springs.
Mr Edwardson: I'm sorry?
Constable Hand: In Alice Springs. If you read the next sentence [of a transcript of the footage], it says "if this were to occur in Alice Springs".
Mr Edwardson: Why does it make any difference whether it's in Alice Springs or Yuendumu?
Constable Hand: It's a different way of policing on communities. We always like to be as non-violent as we can with arrests because we have to live in those areas, in those communities. And we're, you know, trying to build partnerships with people in the communities. Obviously if force needs to be used, we will use it, but we police differently on Indigenous communities.
Alice Springs-based officer Sergeant Evan Walker was later asked if he would be ready to draw his gun if he was trying to arrest Mr Walker in similar circumstances.
"Yes, and on an occasion like that you would be prepared and ready to draw at a moment's notice, if necessary," he replied.
A high-risk situation before the fatal arrest
The court heard Constable Rolfe had watched the body-cam footage of the first attempt to arrest Mr Walker several times in the days after it happened.
He was part of a specialist police unit — the Immediate Response Team (IRT) — sent to Yuendumu from Alice Springs three days later to help local officers with tasks including Mr Walker's arrest.
Local health staff had left the community that day, Yuendumu officer-in-charge Julie Frost told the court, and police could be called upon to escort back-up medical staff from another community about 45 minutes away if they were required.
Sergeant Frost said she briefed the IRT when it arrived, including on a plan to arrest Mr Walker at 5:30am the following day.
The early morning was "a far safer time to arrest people", she told the court on Thursday, and would mean Felix Alefaio, a local officer who knew Mr Walker along with the entry and exit points in community houses, would be there to help.
When an IRT member asked what team members should do if they encountered Mr Walker during their policing, Sergeant Frost said her response was: "By all means, lock him up."
The shots were fired around 15 minutes later, when Constables Rolfe and Eberl tracked Mr Walker down.
Mr Walker died in the Yuendumu police station about an hour after the shots were fired.
In his opening address, Crown prosecutor Philip Strickland told the court Constable Rolfe "ignored" the safer arrest plan sketched by Sergeant Frost, despite his knowledge of the axe incident days earlier and police training to minimise risk.
In his address, Mr Edwardson told jury members that in this case "more than most … intellect must rule the heart" and he reminded them to maintain an open mind throughout the course of the trial.
The week of evidence closed with Sergeant Frost forced by Mr Edwardson to deny she "concealed" notes about the events around the shooting in the days that followed, which she failed to provide to the court during Constable Rolfe's committal hearing.
More police witnesses are expected to take the stand when the trial before Justice John Burns resumes on Monday.
