Tears as body worn cameras show moment 95-year-old Clare Nowland was tasered

Family members broke down in tears as they watched confronting footage of the moment a great-grandmother was fatally tasered in a rural nursing home. Senior Constable Kristian James Samuel White discharged his Taser at Clare Nowland in Yallambee Lodge nursing home in Cooma on May 17, causing her to fall backwards and sustain injuries that ended her life, the court has been told. The 34-year-old has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter and is fighting the allegation during a weeks-long trial in the NSW Supreme Court. On Tuesday, the jury was shown footage from the body cameras worn by Constable White and his colleague when they arrived at the aged care home just before 5am. The footage showed Mrs Nowland wearing pink pyjamas and sitting at a desk in a room grasping a knife and her four-wheeled walking frame. Constable White, his colleague and two paramedics were gathered at the doorway and urged the great-grandmother to stay seated and put down the knife. In the footage, Mrs Nowland struggles to get to her feet with the help of her walking frame and lifts the knife when someone steps towards her. “We’re not playing this game Clare, put that down,” Constable White tells her as he lifts the Taser and points it at her in view of his body camera. “Clare, stop now. You see this? This is a Taser.” The footage then shows Constable White activating the Taser’s warning system, which releases a loud noise and a pulsating light at Mrs Nowland. “You keep coming, you’re going to get tased,” he told her. He asks her repeatedly to stop as the nonagenarian continues to amble slowly towards the door with both hands on her walker. “Stop, just … Nah, bugger it,” the police officer said before deploying his Taser at her chest. “Got her ... grab it”. The 95-year-old woman wobbled and pitched forward before lurching backwards and slamming against the floor. The court has heard she sustained serious injuries that caused her death days later. Gasps could be heard throughout the courtroom when the great-grandmother fell to the floor in the graphic footage, and several of Mrs Nowland’s family members wiped away tears. The footage captured on Constable White’s body camera showed Mrs Nowland clutching her head as she lay on the ground, barely moving. Both officers rushed forward as Mrs Nowland lay on the ground, with Constable White keeping an arm on the woman’s shoulder. “I didn’t expect it to be like that,” his colleague said as they stood over the elderly woman. “I was thinking I could just grab it, but it was a bit too sharp and it was pointed at me.” The confrontation lasted three minutes and is the crucial element of the trial, Crown prosecutor 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 Mrs Nowland to serious risk. Mr Hatfield said he expected evidence would be given about a conversation Constable White allegedly had with a colleague after the incident. “I’ve had a look and supposedly we aren’t meant to tase elderly people, but in this circumstance I needed to,” the officer is alleged to have said. Constable White’s lawyer Troy Edwards SC argued his client acted in accordance with his duties as a police officer to “stop the threat and counteract the risk” Mrs Nowland posed to herself and others while holding a knife. He said the police officer wrote in an incident report on the day that he deployed his police-issued Taser because he felt a “violent confrontation was imminent”. The court was told the 34-year-old had been made aware of a previous violent incident involving Mrs Nowland when he responded to the call on May 17. In the two hours prior to the deadly incident, the court was told the great-grandmother had been wandering around the nursing home holding two knives. Mr Hatfield read two statements from residents of Yallambee Lodge, whose rooms Mrs Nowland had entered in the hours before she was fatally tased. A 90-year-old man said she had been holding two knives when she entered his room but she “didn’t threaten or raise them at me” before being ushered out of the room. Mrs Nowland then went into the room of an 84-year-old man and had an hours-long standoff with carers during which she waved the knives in the air. She threw one of the knives at a staff member, but it landed on the floor. The incident prompted a nurse to call triple-0, which dispatched an ambulance and notified police because of the involvement of a knife. Mrs Nowland suffered from symptoms of dementia but had not been formally diagnosed, the jury was told. Forensic pathologist Sairita Maistry conducted the autopsy on Mrs Nowland and concluded she had died from blunt force trauma to the head. The 95-year-old was 154cms tall and weighed just 47.5kgs when her body was examined. The trial came to a sudden halt around lunchtime on Tuesday when a juror fainted in the jury box, falling forwards with a loud thud. He was attended by court sheriffs and an ambulance was called. However, the juror appeared well enough to continue and the trial resumed on Tuesday afternoon.