There was a gunshot in the darkening desert night. Two more quickly followed.
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.
Inside a red-walled house in the community of Yuendumu, the bullets had hit Kumanjayi Walker, a 19-year-old from Central Australia.
The shots were fired by Zachary Rolfe, then 28, a constable who had joined the Northern Territory Police Force about three years earlier.
It was not quite 7:30pm on Saturday, November 9, 2019: a night that left a young man dead, a community riven with grief and distrust and, four days later, a police officer charged with murder over an Aboriginal death in custody.
Constable Rolfe and other officers had travelled the nearly 300 kilometres from Alice Springs to Yuendumu to arrest Mr Walker.
During their attempt, the teenager stabbed Constable Rolfe in the shoulder with a pair of scissors, then the three shots were fired.
The nearest professional medical help was about an hour's drive away. Health staff had been evacuated from Yuendumu earlier in the day because of break-ins at staff accommodation.
So, it was to the police station that Mr Walker was taken where officers continued to render first aid.
Gathered in the dark outside the building, worried community members begged the personnel to let elders come inside and check on the teenager.
It was daylight again before many of them learned Mr Walker had died in the night.
Constable Rolfe's murder trial begins on Monday, and his legal team has vowed to vigorously defend the charge in a case likely to be followed from the red centre of the nation all the way to its coastlines.
A nation divided
The roads in and out of Yuendumu were cut for days this week by heavy rain and floodwater.
More disaster arrived weeks before that, with the first COVID cases multiplying quickly in overcrowded homes, in people battling chronic diseases of poverty, many of them unvaccinated. Remote travel restrictions have been brought in to slow the spread.
Those who are able are still hoping to make it to Alice Springs to see the trial streamed to the local courthouse; others intend to travel all the way to Darwin where the proceedings are being held.
Constable Rolfe has returned to the Northern Territory from Canberra, where he has been on bail and in a legal limbo that has dragged through multiple delays.
What unfolded on the night of November 9 — and attention towards what will happen next — has clearly reverberated from the nation's heart outwards.
In the days after the shooting, leaders travelled to Yuendumu to meet an aggrieved community and promised their many questions about what happened would be answered.
The charge was laid days later and demonstrators filled streets around the country as they chanted "Justice for Walker" and waved Aboriginal flags.
The charge was slammed by police unions locally and nationally.
Supporters on social media declared the young constable has been judged prematurely in the courts of public opinion.
Facing catastrophe in his first days on the job, NT Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker urged calm: "My officers are hurting, the community is hurting," he told a Darwin media scrum.
"The path we are on will be a search for the truth. We have reached a point where the court will need to make the decision. Everybody must respect that process."
A wait for answers enters the home stretch
Constable Rolfe was committed to stand trial late in 2020, after a four-day local court hearing to determine if there was a case to send the matter to the Northern Territory Supreme Court.
The reasons behind that decision, alongside several other pieces of information heard in courtrooms since, are suppressed.
The trial has been moved from Alice Springs to Darwin. It has been delayed by COVID-19 lockdowns as legal teams were trapped in Sydney.
Less than an hour before it was due to begin, days after Zach Rolfe turned 30 in August last year, the High Court accepted a last-minute application to rule on a dispute about what defences Constable Rolfe was able to use.
The jury will now be empanelled on Monday, more than 800 days after the shooting, ahead of a trial expected to run three weeks.
The defence team has foreshadowed arguments based on self-defence and compliance with Constable Rolfe's training and duties.
The law is rarely black and white, but there can be little doubt whatever verdict the jury ultimately selects will assume an emblematic status for the many people closely watching the final chapter of this story.
Before it comes to an end, back in Yuendumu, a small community will be watching very closely, for answers promised long ago.
Editor's note 18/02/2022: A previous version of this story said Mr Walker was taken to the police station before officers rendered first aid. It has been updated to make clear that first aid continued at the police station.
