Key three minutes before Clare Nowland tasered by police officer Kristian White

A fatal confrontation that lasted less than three minutes has been crucial in the trial of a police officer who fired his Taser at a 95-year-old woman who had dementia and used a walker. Kristian White, 34, faced an eight-day trial in the NSW Supreme Court after he pleaded not guilty to the manslaughter of Clare Nowland inside a nursing home in Cooma, in southern NSW. He and his colleague Acting Sergeant Jessica Pank were called to Yallambee Lodge nursing home before 5am on May 17 last year in response to a triple-0 call from nurse Rosaline Baker. During the call, Ms Baker asked for assistance with a “very aggressive” elderly resident who was holding two knives. An ambulance was dispatched and police were notified because Mrs Nowland was armed. The jury was told the great-grandmother entered the rooms of four of her fellow residents during the two hours leading up to the arrival of police and ambulance officers. Surveillance footage played in court shows Mrs Nowland relying on her four-wheeled walking frame as she shuffles around the nursing home in pink pyjamas, which would later bear tiny holes from contact with the Taser probes. While she was inside the room of an 84-year-old resident, the jury was told Mrs Nowland threw a knife at nursing assistant Mamta Rai that missed and landed on the ground. The incident prompted the triple-0 call, which led to Constable White and now-Senior Constable Pank being pulled from their beds and recalled to duty. When they arrived and rendezvoused with paramedics Anna Hofner and Kingsley Newman, Mrs Nowland was nowhere to be found. After a search of the nursing home grounds, Mrs Nowland was found sitting at a desk inside a nurse’s office with her walking frame and clutching a steak knife and a pen. Less than three minutes later, she would be fatally injured and rushed to hospital. Crucial three minutes The paramedics and police officers can be heard in the surveillance footage urging the great-grandmother to stay seated and put down the knife. She instead put down the pen. “She didn’t seem to acknowledge anything I said,” Ms Hofner told the court. The jury has been told the great-grandmother found it difficult to follow instructions and became uncharacteristically aggressive before her death, which a geriatrician attributed to Mrs Nowland’s undiagnosed dementia. Mrs Nowland struggled to her feet using her walking frame and started to slowly move towards the doorway, but Ms Hofner said she stepped back because “she was too close for my comfort”. Paramedics and police talk to Clare Nowland, 95, as she sits in an office in the minutes before she was fatally tasered by Senior Constable Kristian White on May 17, 2023. Ms Hofner told the court that she was afraid she might be stabbed but later conceded she could have stepped back and there was no danger of anyone there being struck by Mrs Nowland. When Sergeant Pank attempted to approach the great-grandmother to grab the knife, she stopped inching forward and raised the weapon. “I remember I was scared for my physical safety at this point, trying to get the knife because it looked really sharp and her eyes were dark,” Constable Pank recalled. “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 agreed that she was easily able to step backwards out of harm’s way because of Mrs Nowland’s slow movements and mobility issues. Constable White said the “raising of the knife” at Constable Pank “indicated to me that she was willing to use the knife if anyone got near her”. He said he adopted a “sterner tone” with the great-grandmother, who had fixed a “very intense stare” on Constable Pank after the failed attempt. “I felt the threat had increased significantly,” he said. The footage of the incident shows Constable White asking Mrs Nowland repeatedly to put down the knife before activating his Taser’s warning signals. “We’re not playing this game Clare, put that down,” Constable White tells her in the footage. “You keep coming, you’re going to get tased.” As the nonagenarian inched forward, Constable White asked her repeatedly to sit down and put down the knife. The jury has been told he kept the Taser pointed at Mrs Nowland for 60 seconds before he pulled the trigger. Constable White said he continued to warn the great-grandmother “because of her age, I wanted to give her every opportunity to comply with our directions”. “And that was one minute?” Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC asked. The footage shows Mrs Nowland continuing to inch forward with both hands on her walking frame despite the requests to stop. “Stop, just … Nah, bugger it,” Constable White said before deploying his stun gun at her chest. “Got her … grab it.” The great-grandmother, who weighed less than 48kg, wobbled before falling backwards and slamming against the floor. She sustained a “pretty significant brain bleed” and died in hospital a week later. Impatient or protective? The main question the jury has been asked to consider is whether Constable White’s deployment of his service weapon was a proportionate or disproportionate response. Mr Hatfield argued the police officer’s reaction was such an “utterly unnecessary and obviously excessive use of force” that it amounted to manslaughter. In his closing statement, he said there was “an obvious risk” of Mrs Nowland falling if struck by a Taser and her “age and frailty” translated into an evident “risk of really serious injury” if she did fall. Mr Hatfield argued Constable White’s decision to deploy the Taser was unreasonable and dangerous, given the great-grandmother’s age, frailty, lack of mobility, and symptoms of dementia. In a report after the incident, Constable White wrote that he discharged the weapon because he felt “a violent confrontation was imminent”. However, the Crown prosecutor said the jury might consider his utterance of “bugger it” was “completely inconsistent with it being to prevent an imminent violent confrontation”. “You might understand that to mean he was fed up, impatient, not prepared to wait any longer,” he told the jurors. “You might think no reasonable person in the position of the accused at that time would have considered that a violent confrontation with Mrs Nowland was imminent.” Yet Constable White’s barrister Troy Edwards SC maintained that his client acted in accordance with his duty as a police officer “to stop the threat and counteract the risk” Mrs Nowland posed to herself and others while holding the knife. He said two nursing home staff members, a nursing home resident, a paramedic and Constable Pank had told the jury “they were frightened Mrs Nowland would use the knife”. Mr Edwards told the court that Constable White had tried negotiating and grabbing the knife from her to “defuse the situation” but his “options had run out”. “At the time Constable White decided to remove the Taser from his holster … many of the strategies that had been tried … they failed,” he stated in his closing statement. It was “evident” to the police officer that Mrs Nowland was “absolutely determined to keep possession of the knife”, according to Mr Edwards. “It’s not the case that the accused could have turned on his heels … It was his job to obtain a resolution,” he told the jury. “He had to disarm her.” Constable White said he recalled telling Constable Pank afterwards that he felt his actions were “justified”. “We sat down and discussed ‘Yes she was elderly’. We accepted that. But then … I said she was armed with a knife and walking towards us with an intent … it appeared that she was going to strike out at us with a knife,” he told the jury. “To me, it was justified.” The jury of four women and eight men retired on Thursday to consider their verdict.