The defence team in Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe's murder trial has accused the officer-in-charge of the Yuendumu police station of deliberately concealing notes relating to the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker.
Constable Rolfe, 30, has pleaded not guilty to murder after fatally shooting the Yuendumu teenager during an attempted arrest on the evening of Saturday, November 9, 2019.
He has also pleaded not guilty to alternative charges of manslaughter and engaging in a violent act causing death.
NT Police Sergeant Julie Frost yesterday gave evidence about a "safer" plan to arrest Mr Walker at 5:30am on Sunday, November 10, 2019, which prosecutors have alleged Constable Rolfe ignored.
On day five of the trial, Sergeant Frost was cross-examined by defence barrister David Edwardson QC, about a five-page chronology of events she wrote in the days after Mr Walker's death.
Mr Edwardson told the court Sergeant Frost failed to acknowledge the existence of the timeline when specifically asked at a committal hearing in September 2020 whether she had produced any notes.
The chronology was only handed over to the defence team several months later, following a request from a detective, the court heard.
Sergeant Frost said her chronology was an "aide-memoire", designed to assist with a formal 67-page statement she provided to detectives four days after the fatal shooting.
Mr Edwardson told the court Sergeant Frost's chronology was the first written account of her memory of the events surrounding the shooting.
He said the chronology included Sergeant Frost's expectations of a group of Alice Springs-based officers — including Constable Rolfe — who arrived in Yuendumu shortly before 7pm on November 9, 2019.
Known as the Immediate Response Team, the group had been sent to the remote community to help fatigued Yuendumu officers, who had been dealing with a spate of recent break-ins.
The team was also tasked with helping to arrest Mr Walker, who had threatened two local officers with an axe before running away three days earlier.
Sergeant Frost yesterday told the court she briefed the IRT on the plan to arrest Mr Walker early the next morning but also said they should "lock him up" if they came across him earlier.
Mr Edwardson told the court the sergeant's chronology specifically included reference to the IRT members "collecting intelligence as to the whereabouts Walker was".
He also noted that it said: "If they did happen to locate him along the way, they were to arrest him. Otherwise, the plan was to wait."
Today, Sergeant Frost told the court the IRT members were not meant to specifically search for Mr Walker that night.
"Their duties, after leaving the police station, was to cover call, collect intelligence, not to actively look for Kumanjayi Walker," she said.
But Mr Edwardson told the court she made no mention of not actively searching for Mr Walker in her chronology, nor in her testimony in court yesterday.
Sergeant agrees, she did not know where Mr Walker would be
Following further questioning about the planned early morning arrest, Sergeant Frost acknowledged there was no specific intelligence about where Mr Walker would be on Sunday morning.
"And you might have had a preference for a 5am arrest, but that's futile if you don't know where he's going to be at 5am?" Mr Edwardson asked.
"That's correct," she responded.
Mr Edwardson told the court that after the IRT members were given a short briefing from the sergeant, they went to House 577, where the axe incident occurred several days earlier.
"They were running their own destiny in terms of how they went about intelligence gathering," he said.
"How they went about trying to identify where he would be and making their own assessment, their own risk assessment, of the most appropriate way in which he could or should be apprehended."
Shortly after they went to house 577, Constable Rolfe and Constable Adam Eberl encountered Mr Walker at House 511, where the fatal shooting occurred.
Sergeant Frost's direct manager, Superintendent Jody Nobbs also took the stand today.
He told the court the deployment of the Immediate Response Team came after Sergeant Frost requested assistance.
He said while Mr Walker had been identified as a "high-risk" arrest target, the use of the IRT was not categorised as high-risk, but as a "general support" deployment.
Superintendent Nobbs will continue giving evidence on Monday.
