One of the Northern Territory's highest ranking police officers has told Constable Zach Rolfe's murder trial that Kumanjayi Walker planned to surrender.
Assistant police commissioner Travis Wurst says he sent Rolfe and his team to the outback community of Yuendumu to help exhausted local officers with general duties.
"Support was required for the existing Yuendumu staff to give them some respite as well as allowing the development of a plan to bring Kumanjayi Walker into police custody," he told the Supreme Court in Darwin on Thursday.
"There was a funeral to be held in the community later (on November 9, 2019 and) the family for Walker were going to hand him to police after."
Mr Wurst said a regional commander in central Australia had told him early on the same day that Mr Walker remained at large and he was believed to be behind a series of break-ins targeting local health team's homes.
Fed-up health staff had left Yuendumu and were unlikely to return until more officers were sent to the remote community, 290km northwest of Alice Springs.
Rolfe's team were selected because they could deploy more quickly than other frontline police.
Mr Wurst said the Yuendumu assignment was not a high-risk operation and many other frontline police staff could have done it.
"The funeral that was going to occur later that day and their efforts would be undertaking utilising family and family relationships to facilitate the surrender," he said.
Despite this, Rolfe and three fellow immediate response team members packed their camouflage uniforms and an AR-15 assault rifle.
Mr Wurst said he was not aware the team would search for Mr Walker that night, which was contrary to the arrest plan prepared by the officer-in-charge at the Yuendumu police station, Sergeant Julie Frost.
She has told the jury that she gave the team a printed copy of the approved plan that ordered them to arrest Mr Walker at 5.30am the day after Rolfe shot him.
Rolfe has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Walker. He shot the teen three times during a failed arrest after Mr Walker stabbed him in the shoulder with a pair of scissors.
Prosecutors have conceded the first shot, which was fired while Mr Walker was standing and resisting arrest, was justified.
But it says the fatal second and third shots when Mr Walker was laying on the ground went "too far" because he was "effectively restrained".
Mr Walker died from injuries sustained from either of those shots.
Earlier, Mr Walker's mother Leanne Oldfield said she was standing with the teen outside the house where he was shot just before Rolfe arrived.
"He was next to me and my partner Nathan Coulthard," she said.
"He was laughing at the photo (of) two cousins and an aunty."
The family had spent the day at a much-loved uncle's funeral.
Ms Oldfield said her son then went inside the home.
"As soon as he went inside I saw the police come through the gate," she said.
"They were walking really quickly. I see the guns."
Rolfe's body-worn camera footage recorded the moment he approached the house and spoke to Ms Oldfield, who was still standing outside the house.
"Hey missus," he said to her in a polite and friendly tone.
"Can we go check inside?"
Rolfe fired his first shot just over a minute later.
The trial continues.
