A jury has been played police body-cam vision showing the moment a 95-year-old woman was tasered by a police officer. Senior Constable Kristian White has pleaded not guilty to the manslaughter of Clare Nowland at a New South Wales aged care home in May last year.
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00:00This body cam footage depicts an early morning incident at the Yolambi Lodge in Cooma.
00:07Now that's where 95-year-old Claire Nowland was a resident and in the early hours of one
00:12morning she was making her way around the facility using her walking frame.
00:17When police and paramedics got there they eventually found her in a room of an administration
00:22building and she had a knife with her which she had retrieved from the kitchen.
00:26Now the body worn camera footage we saw was from Senior Constable Christian White, the
00:32defendant and also another angle from his colleague who was also attending.
00:37In the audio of this material we can hear there were repeated warnings to Mrs Nowland
00:42to put the knife on a table or drop it and also to remain seated.
00:47But she was slowly in this footage getting up and using her walker to move close to the
00:52door where these attending officials were.
00:56We also heard Senior Constable White activate a warning sound on the taser and there was
01:01a buzzing noise.
01:03He made a warning to Mrs Nowland and said you keep coming you're going to get tased.
01:09Constable White then activated the taser and the video shows Claire Nowland falling to
01:14the ground and we heard a noise along with that and then the people who were there attended
01:20to her and continued to speak with her.
01:23Now this trial Joe has heard that Claire Nowland died a week later after suffering an inoperable
01:28head injury in that fall.
01:31The Crown is putting its case two ways.
01:34They're alleging that this is a case of manslaughter either by way of criminal negligence or in
01:39the alternative by way of unlawful or dangerous act and Christian White has pleaded not guilty
01:45to that charge.
01:46And what's the jury been told so far about what happened before the taser was used?
01:52Well they've also been played a triple zero call which was made by a member of the nursing
01:58staff at this aged care facility in which Claire Nowland was described as an aggressive
02:03resident who had made her way into the rooms of other people who were also residents there.
02:09Let's have a listen to part of that call.
02:10Tell me exactly what happened.
02:14We just have a very aggressive resident and she's going into different rooms.
02:22We tried getting her out.
02:25We managed to get her out from a couple of rooms and went into the third room which she
02:31cannot even come out.
02:32She's got little knives that she picked up from the kitchen drawer and raising them against
02:40the staff there.
02:44Now late this afternoon Joe we also heard a statement from one of the residents whose
02:48room Claire Nowland went into and in that statement the court heard that he said he
02:53wasn't concerned about her having a knife because she'd never been threatening and she
02:57wasn't threatening and he'd never had issues with her before.
03:00The court has heard that although Mrs Nowland was showing signs of dementia she hadn't been
03:05formally diagnosed with it.
03:07Christian White's defence team has told the jury that a reasonable person in all the circumstances
03:12of this case wouldn't consider his actions to have been disproportionate to the risk
03:17of harm and his lawyers have also told the jury that a serving officer has a duty to
03:23prevent a breach of the peace and to prevent harm to people and in this circumstance they
03:29say that includes police officers who are attending, paramedics, nursing home staff
03:35and also Claire Nowland herself who was they say the source of this risk.
03:39So a lot has happened already but this is only day two of this trial and it's expected
03:43to run for up to three weeks.