The day before Steve Pampalian was shot dead by police in his driveway in a quiet suburban street in Sydney’s north, his older brother Eddie had a longer than usual phone conversation with him.
Mostly it was about the new car Steve hoped to buy after he saved enough money from his long-held job working as a barber. And what Eddie’s daughters, who Steve cared for as if they were his own, were up to.
“We were always so proud of him because he’d drop everything for his nieces,” Eddie says. “All of the photos we have of him are with them.”
It’s these memories of 41-year-old Steve, whom Eddie describes as a gentle soul, that has made the family’s grief at his loss so acute. But this has given way to anger at how police responded.
“If you asked me to write 100 different ways that he would have passed away, this would not be on that list,” he says. “It’s beyond words, even beyond any rational thought – I just can’t comprehend it.
“They shouldn’t have shot him, they should have had a much better way of handling these situations.”
Conflicting reports
On 25 May, when two police officers were called to Alexander Avenue in North Willoughby after reports that a man had threatened neighbours with two knives, they didn’t have their bodycams turned on to capture what happened next.
The New South Wales police assistant commissioner Leanne McCusker said Pampalian had run at the officers with what she described as two “chef-style knives” before they shot him four times.
She said the critical investigation into the shooting, which will be overseen by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC), would examine why police did not deploy a Taser instead of a gun. But she said with the information before her at this stage, and the speed at which Pampalian had approached police, she was confident that the officers had taken the correct course of action.
McCusker also told reporters Pampalian was known to police, although his interactions with law enforcement were “quite minimal”. But Eddie Pampalian says he has followed this up with local police who have confirmed Steve did not have a criminal record and was not known to police.
The family have requested police retract this statement.
Given that the investigation was still under way, a spokesperson for NSW police said, the force was unable to provide further information.
Eddie says the investigating detective has told the tight-knit family it is believed Steve had slipped into psychosis.
Neighbours have told Eddie they had seen Steve in the street looking at the sky and screaming but said he was barefoot – and not shirtless as others have reported.
When police arrived, Steve was back inside his house, where he lived with his parents, and emerged with the knives after police called for him to come outside. The family have been told conflicting reports from police as to whether Steve did in fact have knives before their arrival, when he was standing in the street.
Eddie, in his mission for answers, has been Googling psychosis to try to make sense of what happened to his brother, who had long struggled with anxiety. But that anxiety, for which he took medication, had only occasionally manifested in panic attacks at its most severe.
“How do you go from that to a complete breakdown?” Eddie asks. “He was soft and sensitive … he loved the Hornsby community, he loved his work.
“I feel like something has gone wrong, perhaps something to do with his medication.
“My understanding is that even as he was being shot he probably didn’t even know what was going on.”
‘They need a lot more training’
According to a report released last month by the LECC, almost half of the people involved in critical incidents with NSW police over the past five years were experiencing a mental health crisis.
Among its seven recommendations was an urgent call for better mental health training for officers. It noted this was not a new issue.
“The adequacy of the training provided to police officers, to respond to incidents involving a person experiencing a mental health crisis (‘mental health training’), has been an issue for the NSWPF, long before the commission commenced monitoring critical incident investigations,” it said.
A police spokesperson said officers were trained to respond to mental health episodes, which included annual training on de-escalation strategies.
What keeps playing through Eddie’s head is how members of the public managed to disarm a man wielding a knife using a milk crate in central Sydney four years ago.
He believes there needs to be an inquiry into the use of force by police, particularly when it comes to responding to people experiencing mental health episodes.
“They obviously don’t know how to handle situations and they need a lot more training,” he says. “There’s 100 different ways this could have played out.”
In the wake of police Tasering 95-year-old Clare Nowland in her aged care home after the dementia patient approached them on her walking frame with a steak knife (she later died from her injuries), the Greens state MP and spokesperson for justice, Sue Higginson, called for a parliamentary inquiry into police powers and responses when dealing with vulnerable people.
She said what happened to Pampalian had strengthened the call, as well as the need to bolster the power of the LECCto hold police accountable.
“We had a Taser when we shouldn’t have,” Higginson says. “We’ve had a gun where perhaps we should have had a Taser.
“We need to improve this, and we need to do it as a matter of priority.”
Since Pampalian’s death and the funeral which was held on Monday, condolences have flooded in for the family, who have lived in the community their whole lives.
“We’ve been taken aback by all the people reaching out and saying things like, ‘He used to cut my hair, I really enjoyed talking to him, he was such a gentle soul,’” Eddie says.
“They all say they are in disbelief because of his gentle nature.”
