“See Clare,” a police officer says sternly as he points his Taser towards an elderly woman in pink pyjamas, and triggers a warning light on her torso.
“You’re going to get tased. Stop.”
The 95-year-old nursing home resident – who uses a walking frame and weighs 47.5kg – does not stop.
In dramatic police bodycam footage played before a court this week, Clare Nowland can be seen continuing to slowly walk with the aid of her four-wheel walking frame towards emergency responders who were called to a Snowy Mountains aged care facility in New South Wales last year.
In Nowland’s hand is a steak knife resting on her walker. Three times she stops and raises the knife, and in some of those moments, makes stabbing motions as a police officer attempts to grab the knife.
“Clare, please put the knife down, darling,” one of the paramedics, Anna Hofner, says – one of a number of requests for Nowland to drop the knife.
Sen Const Kristian James Samuel White discharges the warning from his Taser. About 20 seconds later, he says: “Stop. Just, nah, bugger it.”
He fires the electric probes. Nowland lets go of the walker and falls backwards.
“Go, grab it, grab it, grab it,” White says to his partner, Sgt Jessica Pank, referring to the knife.
Nowland moves her head, then lays still on the floor.
“Clare. C’mon, you’re alright,” White says while crouched next to her body as the paramedics move to respond.
“Talk to us, Clare.”
A week after the tasering, Nowland died from head injuries. This week, White’s three-week manslaughter trial began in the supreme court. White has pleaded not guilty.
In his opening argument, White’s barrister, Troy Edwards SC, told the court it was not in dispute that the injuries caused by White tasering Nowland ultimately killed her. But he argued White’s use of the Taser involved a reasonable use of force.
The prosecutor, Brett Hatfield SC, argued White was guilty of manslaughter by way of criminal negligence or by way of an unlawful and dangerous act.
Changes in Nowland’s behaviour
In the witness box this week, a jury heard a play-by-play of what unfolded that evening from those present on the night of 17 May 2023. Intimate details about Nowland’s mental state were also described to the court and shown through CCTV footage.
Prof Susan Kurrle, a geriatrician, appeared as a witness on Wednesday. She did not know Nowland when she was alive, but analysed her health records for the court. She determined Nowland displayed behaviour consistent with moderate to moderately severe dementia.
This, she said, impeded her ability “to understand what was happening to her and to comply with instructions”.
The court heard Nowland had made several attempts to escape the aged care home and there were incidents where she was agitated, aggressive, refused assistance from staff, wandered and disturbed other people. She said people with dementia could have “amazing strength” when distressed.
The jury was shown CCTV of Nowland climbing into a tree and becoming stuck. Footage also showed her ramming a staff member with her walker.
“It is clearly in the three months before her death that the behaviours changed fairly dramatically,” Kurrle said.
About a month before Nowland was tasered, she was prescribed risperidone, an anti-psychotic medication, to help her aggression.
Kurrle said Nowland’s medication had been reduced in the lead up to the tasering incident. When cross-examined by White’s barrister, she said Nowland’s increased aggressive behaviour could have been caused by the reduced dosage.
She also agreed that, given Nowland’s behaviour, it would have been appropriate for her to have been in a dementia-specific unit. The Yallambee Lodge nursing home in Cooma did not have one.
One of Nowland’s eight children, Leslie Lloyd, told the court on Monday that she visited Nowland “daily, sometimes twice daily”. As next of kin, she was often called to assist with her mother.
“I always came,” Lloyd told the court.
Questions when police called
On the night Nowland was tasered, Rosaline Baker was one of three nurses working at Yallambee Lodge. She gave evidence on Wednesday that she found Nowland at about 3am while responding to a call for help from another resident.
Nowland was “moving slowly” in a corridor, she said, with two steak knives and a quarter-full jug of prunes in her hands.
“I just greeted her and asked her if she needed any help,” Baker told the court.
Baker detailed how on multiple occasions she tried to coax Nowland, who began wandering into residents’ rooms, to hand over the knives. Nowland only handed her the prunes.
Baker told the court Nowland had pointed the knives at her, and Nowland was later locked in another resident’s rooms. Baker tried to call Nowland’s daughter for support and, after she was unable to reach her, she called triple zero to request an ambulance.
“The officer told me that the police was coming and I actually inquired ‘why them’ … the police officer said ‘you said she had a knife, that’s why they are also coming to assist with the ambulance officers’,” Baker told the court.
Pank, who responded alongside White, said when they arrived she asked one of the nurses for Nowland’s medical history.
“I did ask [the nurse] if she had dementia … her response was ‘don’t they all have a little bit of dementia?’,” Pank told the court.
The responders found Nowland had exited the room she had been locked in by a back door. One of the two paramedics, Kingsley Peter Newman, gave evidence that during their search they found Nowland had “discarded” one of the knives.
Soon after, the responders found Nowland in a treatment room, sitting by her walker, with a knife and another object in her hand.
The jury heard that it was only around three minutes between responders finding Nowland and White shooting her with the Taser.
‘I think I can get the knife off her’
White would later write in the Computerised Operational Policing System (Cops) database that the incident occurred because “a violent confrontation was imminent, and to prevent injury to police, the taser was discharged”.
Nowland was asked repeatedly to stay seated, and to put down the knife she was carrying. The court heard she did put down an object that was in her hand, but not the knife.
Pank made attempts to grab the knife, but told the court Nowland raised it at her three times.
“I remember saying to Kristian White, ‘I think I can get the knife off her’, I remember him saying, ‘I’ll cover you’. I remember moving forward because her hand was on the walker with the knife facing downwards,” Pank told the court.
Pank said when she stepped forward to get the steak knife, she didn’t feel at a safe distance and thought she could be stabbed. The court heard that she felt comfortable that White had drawn his Taser.
Hofner – who asked Nowland to put down the knife and stay seated – said Nowland “didn’t seem to acknowledge anything I said”. She told Newman to prepare droperidol, a sedative.
Hofner agreed in court that she did not feel in immediate danger.
“I suggest to you there was no danger of any of you being struck by her, do you agree or disagree?” Hatfield asked Hofner.
“I agree,” Hofner responded.
However, under cross-examination by Edwards, Hofner backtracked, saying she did worry that she may be stabbed. Hofner said Nowland held up the knife in a “faster movement than I expected from her”.
Asked by Hatfield if Nowland would have put down the knife had they waited long enough, Hofner responded: “Possibly … but how long would we have had to wait?”
When Baker, the registered nurse, saw White pull the Taser, she told the court she didn’t know what it was, and at first, thought it was a torch.
“In my years of experience as a nurse, almost 50 years, I’ve never seen anything like that,” Baker told the court.
“I was very, very concerned when she was falling to the ground,” Baker told the court.
Newman said after Nowland was tasered, blood quickly pooled under the skin of her head, forming a haematoma. Her faced had drooped, indicating a “significant brain bleed”.
The probes of the Taser were lodged in her pyjamas. Her pyjamas also had burn marks.
‘We aren’t meant to tase elderly people’
On Friday, Sen Sgt William Watt – who is employed by NSW police to train officers on firearms, defence and tactics, and the use of force – gave evidence that police were trained to see a person armed with a knife as a “significant threat”.
“Using a Taser against a subject carrying a knife is generally considered a suitable option,” Watt told the court. “It often provides an effective and relatively safe way of gaining control of a situation.”
However, Watt told the court, police are advised Tasers should not be used in “exceptional circumstances” including against “elderly or disabled persons”.
On the morning after the incident, Sgt Jarrod Dawson was on duty at Cooma police station. Appearing in court on Friday, he recounted a conversation he had with White, which Dawson recorded in the police database.
“I’ve had a look and, supposedly, we aren’t meant to tase elderly people but, in the circumstance, I needed to,” White said, according to Dawson’s report.
“Maybe this will be my first critical incident.”
“Maybe,” Dawson responded.
