‘Needed to’: Cop’s claim after tasering 95yo

Kristian White is on trial over allegations he killed Clare Nowland when he struck her with a Taser. Picture: NewsWire
Kristian White is on trial over allegations he killed Clare Nowland when he struck her with a Taser. Picture: NewsWire

A senior police officer has told a court she was “comfortable” with her subordinate’s decision to Taser a 95-year-old woman in a nursing home.

Clare Nowland died of injuries sustained when Senior Constable Kristian White discharged his Taser at her chest in Yallambee Lodge nursing home in Cooma on May 17.

The police officer is standing trial in the NSW Supreme Court after pleading not guilty to manslaughter over the great-grandmother’s death.

The Crown alleges he breached his duty of care to Mrs Nowland and caused her unlawful death by either criminal negligence or a dangerous act.

TASER COP
Kristian White has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

The 34-year-old does not dispute that he discharged the weapon that caused Mrs Nowland’s death, but his lawyers argue it was a proportionate reaction to the risk she posed by holding a knife.

On Friday, Sergeant Jarrod Dawson told the jury that he examined Constable White’s incident report before he returned to Cooma Police Station about 7.15am on May 17.

In his incident report, Constable White wrote that he deployed his Taser because he felt a “violent confrontation was imminent”.

When he returned to the station, he informed Sergeant Dawson that his body-worn camera footage was still uploading but he had “tagged it as priority, knowing it will need to be reviewed”.

“He said: ‘I’ve had a look and supposedly we aren’t meant to tase elderly people, but in the circumstances I needed to. Maybe this will be my first critical incident’,” Sergeant Dawson recalled.

“I said: ‘Maybe’.”

Sergeant Dawson told the court that it took just under an hour after Constable White and then Acting Sergeant Jessica Pank returned to the police station for the tasering to be declared a “critical incident”.

Clare Nowland was fatally tasered at a nursing home in Cooma on May 17.
Clare Nowland was fatally tasered at a nursing home in Cooma on May 17.

The officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Sergeant Mitchell Bosworth, told the court that tests confirmed Constable White was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol when the incident occurred.

On Thursday, the jury was told Constable White’s supervising officer, Senior Constable Pank, said she thought they had “done the best we could in the situation”.

The pair were called to Yallambee Lodge before 5am on May 17 to respond to a triple-0 call for assistance with a “very aggressive resident” who was holding a knife.

In body-worn camera footage shown to the court, Constable White asks Mrs Nowland repeatedly to put down the knife.

When she didn’t comply, he activated his Taser’s audio and visual warning signals and warned her: “You keep coming, you’re going to get tased.”

The great-grandmother continued to proceed with both hands on her walking frame and Constable White said “Stop, just … Nah, bugger it” and discharged the weapon.

The court was told Mrs Nowland found it difficult to follow instructions and became uncharacteristically aggressive in the months leading up to her death, which a geriatrician attributed to her undiagnosed dementia.

TASER COP
Senior Constable Jessica Pank was on shift with Constable White at the time of the incident. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

She weighed less than 48kg and was reliant on a four-wheeled walking frame to move slowly around the nursing home, the jury was told.

Constable Pank was asked if she, as a supervisor and with the training she had, thought it was appropriate that Constable White discharged his Taser at Ms Nowland.

“I was comfortable with the situation,” Constable Pank confirmed in the statement, but added she wasn’t happy about it.

She told the court she was “scared for her physical safety” when she was trying to get the knife out of Mrs Nowland’s hands because “it looked really sharp and her eyes were dark”.

“When I got close, it was this wave of darkness that went over her face which did put a little bit of fear in me of being close to her to see that, yes a wave of fear,” Constable Pank said.

Nursing home staff, paramedics, and police can be seen searching for Clare Nowland, 95, in the minutes before she was fatally tasered by Senior Constable Kristian White on May 17, 2023.

However, she agreed she was easily able to step backwards out of harm’s way because of Mrs Nowland’s slow movements and mobility issues.

The court was told the 95-year-old had been carrying two knives as she wandered around the nursing home using her four-wheeled walking frame in the hours before she was fatally tasered.

Nursing assistant Mamta Rai told the jury that Mrs Nowland had thrown one of the knives at her, but it fell on the floor.

The incident prompted nurse Rosaline Baker to call triple-0 for assistance, which prompted the dispatch of an ambulance and police due to the involvement of knives.