A court has seen video footage of a police officer Tasering a 95-year-old to disarm her in a nursing home before she fell to the ground and sustained a head injury that ultimately killed her.
The police body-worn camera shows great-grandmother Clare Nowland sitting in a chair in an office at the Snowy Mountains nursing home in checkered pyjamas in the early hours of the morning in May 2023.
Nowland is told repeatedly by police, paramedics, and home staff to stay sitting down and drop the serrated knife she was carrying as she tries to stand up.
“I would love to have that knife, are you able to put that on a table for me?” a paramedic says in the video which was played at Sen Const Kristian James Samuel White’s manslaughter trial in the New South Wales supreme court on Tuesday.
Another person present says: “Can you put the knife just on your walker there, I don’t want you to stand up darling.”
Nowland then stands up and uses her walking frame to slowly move towards the door. After she is asked multiple times to sit down and not come closer, she raises the knife for a moment and then rests her hand again on her walker.
The video shows White raise his Taser and say: “We’re not playing this game Clare, you got to put that down.”
He then repeatedly asks her to put down the knife and says: “This is your first warning.” He then discharges a warning shot from the Taser and says: “Don’t get me to give you another warning.”
After Nowland raises the knife again, White says “na, bugger it”, fires his Taser and then says “got her … grab it”, the video played in court shows.
The video shows White, Sgt Rachel Pank, and the paramedics rushing to support Nowland while she lies on the ground. White says: “Clare c’mon, you’re alright.”
Pank asks White if he’s “all good” and then she says: “I didn’t expect it to be like that.”
After calling the incident in on her police radio, Pank is heard saying in the video: “Unfortunately that is how it had it go. I was thinking, I could just grab it, but it was a bit too sharp … I thought surely I can hit it out her hand.”
Nowland died a week later from a head injury caused by being Tasered, the jury has been told.
White, 34, is facing a trial that could last three weeks after he pleaded not guilty to one count of manslaughter.
White’s barrister, Troy Edwards SC, has told the court that it is not in dispute that the injuries caused by White Tasering Nowland ultimately killed her. But he argued that White’s use of the Taser involved a reasonable use of force.
Prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC has argued that White was guilty of manslaughter by way of criminal negligence or by way of an unlawful and dangerous act.
Dr Sairita Maistry, a forensic pathologist who performed Nowland’s autopsy, appeared as a witness on Tuesday.
She told the court she had concluded Nowland died of blunt force trauma to the head and complications. The court heard the autopsy found Nowland had bruising and bleeds in part of her brain and a laceration that penetrated her brain
“Multiple types of blunt force trauma were present,” Maistry told the court.
A senior technical officer for the NSW police, who appeared as a witness, told the court that White discharged a visual and sound warning before firing the Taser.
Asked by Hatfield what the warning sounded like, he responded: “Quite loud, frightening.”
Under cross-examination by Edwards, the officer was asked if the purpose of using a Taser was to briefly incapacitate a person rather than achieve compliance through pain.
“Well pain comes with that, with electricity,” the officer responded.
Edwards then asked again if that was not the actual purpose of it, and the officer said that was correct.
The court also heard witness statements from two elderly men who lived at the nursing home where Nowland was Tasered. They both described how at some point during the evening of the incident, Nowland had entered their rooms.
One, a 90-year-old man, said in a statement that he saw two knives in Nowland’s hand, which was rested on her walking frame. He said he attempted to usher her out of the room until a nurse came to help.
The other, who was 84 years old, said in his statement that Nowland had waved a knife around while nurses tried to get her out of his room.
The man said he was then taken out of the room, and returned around half an hour later after he was told Nowland was no longer inside.
Nowland is survived by eight children, 24 grandchildren and 31 great-grandchildren – many of whom have been attending the trial.
The trial, before Justice Ian Harrison, continues.
