Family members broke down in tears as they watched harrowing footage of the moment a great-grandmother was fatally tasered at a rural nursing home.
Senior Constable Kristian James Samuel White discharged his Taser in Clare Nowland at the Yallambee Lodge nursing home in Cooma on May 17, causing her to fall backwards and suffer injuries that ended her life, a court has been told.
The 34-year-old has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter and is fighting the charge during a weeks-long trial in the NSW Supreme Court.
On Tuesday, the jury was shown footage from the body cameras Constable White and his colleague were wearing when they arrived at the retirement home just before 5 a.m.
The footage showed Ms Nowland wearing pink pajamas and sitting at a desk in a room, holding a knife and using her four-wheeled walker.
Officer White, his colleague and two paramedics gathered at the doorway, urging the great-grandmother to stay seated and put the knife down.
In the footage, Ms Nowland struggles to get up with the help of her walker and lifts the knife as someone steps towards her.
“We’re not playing this game Clare, put that down,” Officer White tells her as he lifts the Taser and points it at her in view of his body camera.
Clare Nowland (pictured) died in May 2023 after being tasered in a nursing home, causing her to fall backwards and hit her head
“Clare, stop now. Do you see this? This is a Taser.’
The footage then shows Constable White activating the Taser’s warning system, which emits a loud sound and a pulsating light at Ms Nowland.
“If you keep coming, you’ll get a bag,” he told her.
He repeatedly asks her to stop as the multi-year-old continues to slowly walk towards the door with both hands on her walker.
“Stop, just… No, damn it,” the police officer said before putting his Taser on her chest.
“I got her…get him.”
The 95-year-old woman wobbled and threw herself forward before lurching backwards and hitting the ground.
The court heard she suffered serious injuries which caused her to die a few days later.
Sighs could be heard throughout the courtroom as the great-grandmother fell to the floor in the graphic footage, and several of Ms Nowland’s relatives wiped away tears.
The footage captured by Officer White’s body camera shows Ms. Nowland holding her head as she lay on the ground and barely moving.
Both officers ran forward as Ms. Nowland lay on the ground, Officer White keeping an arm on the woman’s shoulder.
“I didn’t expect it to be like this,” his colleague said as they stood over the older woman.
“I thought I could just grab it, but it was a little too sharp and it was aimed at me.”
The family of Clare Nowland (pictured) filled the public gallery on the second day of the trial
The confrontation lasted three minutes and is the crucial part of the trial, Attorney General Brett Hatfield SC told the court on Monday.
The Crown alleges Constable White’s conduct amounted to manslaughter because he breached his duty of care and exposed Ms Nowland to serious risk.
Mr Hatfield said he expected evidence to be given about a conversation Constable White allegedly had with a colleague after the incident.
“I looked and we are probably not supposed to burden the elderly, but in these circumstances I had to,” the officer allegedly said.
Constable White’s barrister Troy Edwards SC argued his client acted in accordance with his duties as a police officer to “stop the threat and counter the risk” Ms Nowland posed to herself and others while holding a knife.
He said the officer wrote in an incident report the day he deployed his police-issued Taser because he felt a “violent confrontation was imminent.”
Two steak knives and a pen lamp were seized from the nursing home (photo)
Holes have been discovered in the pajamas Ms Nowland was wearing when she was tasered (pictured)
The court was told the 34-year-old had been made aware of a previous violent incident involving Ms Nowland when he responded to the call on May 17.
In the two hours before the fatal incident, the court was told the great-grandmother had been walking around the nursing home with two knives.
Mr Hatfield read out two statements from residents of Yallambee Lodge, whose rooms Ms Nowland had entered in the hours before she was fatally tasered.
A 90-year-old man said she was holding two knives when she entered his room, but that she “did not threaten or raise them at me” before being led out of the room.
Ms Nowland then entered the room of an 84-year-old man and had an hours-long standoff with carers, waving the knives in the air.
She threw one of the knives at an employee, but it landed on the ground.
The incident prompted a nurse to call triple-0, who sent an ambulance and notified police due to the involvement of a knife.
Constable White was supported in court by his wife (pictured)
Mrs Nowland was suffering from symptoms of dementia but had not yet been formally diagnosed, the jury was told.
Forensic pathologist Sairita Maistry carried out the autopsy on Ms Nowland and concluded she had died from blunt force trauma to the head.
The 95-year-old was 154cm tall and weighed just 47.5kg when her body was examined.
The trial came to a sudden halt around lunchtime on Tuesday when a juror fainted in the jury box and fell forward with a loud thud.
He was attended by court sheriffs and an ambulance was called.
However, the juror seemed well enough to proceed and the trial resumed Tuesday afternoon.