A police sergeant in a remote Aboriginal community briefed officers on a proposal to safely arrest a fugitive but they ignored this plan the night the Warlpiri man was shot dead, prosecutors allege.
Sgt Julie Frost was in charge of the police station in Yuendumu, 300km north-west of Alice Springs, in November 2019 when 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker was shot three times by Constable Zachary Rolfe during an attempted arrest at a house.
Rolfe is on trial for Walker’s alleged murder in the Northern Territory supreme court. He has pleaded not guilty to that and alternate charges.
Frost told the court on Thursday that on the night Walker was killed she provided a briefing to Rolfe, three colleagues from the Alice Springs-based Immediate Response Team – who receive specialised training in arresting high-risk targets – and an officer trained to handle police dogs.
Frost said she had called in the extra resources because of multiple issues including local officers deployed elsewhere, a spike in break-ins, unrest in a nearby remote community, the departure of medical staff, and the need to safely arrest Walker, who days earlier had threatened two police with a small axe.
Rolfe and the other officers from Alice Springs arrived in Yuendumu about 7pm on 9 November 2019. Frost told the court that in a briefing which started about this time, she had told the officers she expected them to spend the rest of the night handling jobs that came through the on-call phone, conducting high-visibility patrols that would “saturate” areas where there had been break-ins, familiarising themselves with the community and escorting medical staff on any jobs.
She said that as part of that briefing, and in a separate plan she had also emailed the officers earlier that day, Frost told the officers that they would meet up at 5am on 10 November with a view to arresting Walker while he was sleeping about 30 minutes later.
“A early-morning arrest like that is a far safer time to arrest people,” Frost told the court.
“We know that they will be sleeping, and it gives the element of surprise.”
During the briefing, Frost said one officer, though she could not remember who, asked what they should do if they came across Walker that night, to which she responded “by all means pick him up”.
Frost told the court that Constable James Kirstenfeldt – who she found before the briefing to be “very dominating” as “it appeared he was trying to take over the conversation and would not listen to me” – also asked whether there were many guns in the community, to which she responded there was not.
The briefing finished after about five minutes and images shown to the court indicate Rolfe left the station with his colleagues at 7.06pm. Frost did not deploy with the officers.
Prosecutors have previously told the court that Rolfe and the other officers went immediately to House 577, a property where Walker had often stayed with his partner.
The officers were told at the house that Walker was not there but he may be at a property known as House 511, where his grandmother lived.
Rolfe and his colleague, Constable Adam Eberl, located Walker inside that house.
He was asked to put his hands behind his back by Rolfe, but instead pulled a pair of medical scissors from his pocket and brought them down in a stabbing motion into Rolfe’s left shoulder.
Eberl then struggled with Walker, who was shot soon after by Rolfe, the court has heard. The first shot is not subject to any charges but the second and third shots, which the prosecution alleges were fired several seconds later from close range by Rolfe when Eberl had control of Walker, are the basis for the murder charge.
The three shots were fired at 7.21pm – 15 minutes after Rolfe left the Yuendumu police station.
David Edwardson QC, for Rolfe, said his client would defend his actions as being reasonable and justifiable in the context of the danger faced by him and Eberl. Edwardson said Rolfe was acting in self-defence, and to defend the life of Eberl, when he fired the second and third shots and his training emphasised that “edged weapon equals gun”. The defence also disputes that Eberl had control of Walker when the second and third shots were fired.
Edwardson said gathering intelligence on Walker was included in the plan and so therefore it was logical to attend house 577 and see if he was there. Edwardson will cross-examine Frost on Friday.
On Thursday, the court also heard from Lottie Robertson, the grandmother of Walker’s partner Rickisha Robertson and a Yuendumu elder.
She said Frost had been “really angry” when she spoke with her about Walker threatening the officers with an axe, with Frost saying that he could have been shot dead or harmed a police member.
Robertson had agreed with Frost that Walker should hand himself in, and said “we tried very hard to talk to him”. She clarified that culturally it was more appropriate for her husband Eddie responsibility to speak to Walker, which he did, but she said there was little response from Walker about whether he would surrender.
“He’s not a man of many words,” she said.
Robertson said Walker had come back to Yuendumu after escaping from a residential alcohol treatment centre and removing an electronic monitoring device to attend a funeral.
Detective Acting Snr Sgt Evan Kelly completed his evidence on Thursday. He was not in Yuendumu at the time of Walker’s death, but was Rolfe’s supervisor in Alice Springs and had previously instructed him to “take a look” at Walker’s background after he was identified as an arrest target.
Kelly said he met with Rolfe the night of the shooting after he had returned back to Alice Springs, but did not discuss the incident with him. He said three or four days later, he also went to Rolfe’s house where he was joined by colleagues including other officers who had been in Yuendumu on the night of the shooting: Eberl, Kirstenfeldt, and Snr Constable Anthony Hawkings.
He said “we were basically having a barbecue and a couple of beers as a welfare check on Constable Rolfe” but said he did not discuss the shooting and he did not hear anybody else discussing it.
He gave extensive evidence about police training, including that it was futile to make “rigid” arrest plans, and he had been taught that if he was to shoot an offender he should fire twice then assess if he had “gained subject control”, before firing again.
Kelly also gave evidence that it was a matter of “personal preference” whether officers decided to walk with their hands on their firearms during certain operations. Earlier this week, the prosecution showed footage of Rolfe raiding a property with his hand on his firearm, which had been unclipped – something they argue indicates he was more willing to use his firearm than is supported under his police training.
“Some officers will walk with their hand on their firearm. Some officers don’t,” Kelly said.
“But having your hand close to your firearm will allow for a faster draw if something presents itself.”
Under questioning from Sophie Callan SC for the prosecution, Kelly clarified it was not common for officers to leave retention devices on their holsters unclipped, in order to be able to remove their firearm more quickly – something the prosecution alleges Rolfe did while raiding other properties in Yuendumu.
The trial before Justice John Burns continues.
