By Sarah McPhee
The nurse who called triple zero about Clare Nowland, who was wandering around a NSW aged care home with knives, has told a court she had “never seen anything” like it when a police officer aimed a Taser at the 95-year-old and was “very concerned” as the great-grandmother fell to the ground.
The NSW Supreme Court released CCTV footage on Wednesday showing Nowland’s final moments inside Cooma’s Yallambee Lodge on May 17, 2023, before she was Tasered by Senior Constable Kristian James Samuel White. Nowland died in hospital a week later. White, 34, has pleaded not guilty to her manslaughter.
Registered nurse Rosaline Baker, who was on the night shift at the time, gave evidence that she was alerted by another resident at 3.10am and found Nowland standing in the corridor in her pink pyjamas, “moving slowly” with her walker, and holding two steak knives and a quarter-full jug of prunes.
She said Nowland said “no” to handing over the items, but “eventually” gave up the prunes. The nurse said Nowland still had the knives as she moved in and out of the bedrooms of four residents and “asked for chocolates”, which were then offered by a male resident.
“I picked three of them, gave it to Clare. She didn’t want the chocolate,” Baker said. “I asked ‘Did you want any drink?’ [She said,] ‘No.’ ”
She said two nursing assistants tried to help her get Nowland out of the fourth bedroom.
Nurse Rosaline Baker leaves court after giving evidence about the Tasering of Clare Nowland.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Baker said she tried calling two of Nowland’s daughters, then the facility manager, who suggested Nowland might need to go to hospital to be sedated, but she wanted to speak to the 95-year-old again.
She said at one stage Nowland tried pointing the knife at her. Asked by Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, whether she was “scared or concerned”, she said “no”, but her main concern was “that something could happen to other residents”.
Baker said she continued to encourage Nowland to drop the knife, but her “main answer was ‘no’”.
In a triple-zero call at 4.08am, previously played to the court, the nurse reported a “very aggressive resident” had “two little knives” and was “raising them”.
Baker told the court she then received a call from the police, who said officers were coming to assist ambulance staff because Nowland had a knife.
“I actually inquired, why them, not the ambulance? [Because] I said she was going to the hospital to be sedated,” she said.
Baker said she was told the police would be half an hour because they needed “to go to the office to get into their uniforms before they could come to the facility”.
Nowland inside the Yallambee Lodge at Cooma the morning she was Tasered.
“I thought, once you’re called, they are 24 hours. That wasn’t the case in the rural setting.”
She said Nowland “escaped from the back door” of the bedroom, and she found her in the administration building. She said Nowland had raised an arm holding the knife, and she “backed off”.
“I was kind of concerned, not knowing whether she was going to really attack me or not,” Baker said. “With other experiences, I just thought, ‘Give her some time, she’ll calm down.’ ”
The nurse said she had met the ambulance staff and police, and they initially could not locate Nowland until she was discovered shortly after 5am sitting in a treatment room, still holding one of the knives.
The jury has viewed body-worn police footage which captured White and others repeatedly asking Nowland to drop the knife before White said, “Stop … nah, bugger it”, and discharged his weapon.
Senior Constable Kristian James Samuel White leaves the court on Wednesday.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Baker said she saw a male police officer take out “something that he had in his hand”, but she did not know what it was, and thought it was “just a torch”.
“When he held it and pointed … I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said. “I just saw two little lights. In my years of experience as a nurse, almost 50 years, I’ve never seen anything like that.”
She added: “I was very, very concerned when she was falling to the ground.”
Under cross-examination by White’s barrister, Troy Edwards, SC, Baker accepted she had said in a police statement that “as soon as Clare started to fall, the police and the ambulance rushed in to try and stop her, but they didn’t get there in time”.
Nowland ‘unable to comply with instructions’
The court also viewed CCTV of two incidents involving Nowland in April 2023, which the prosecutor described as her becoming “stuck in a tree”, and ramming a carer with her walker while agitated.
The court has heard Nowland was not formally diagnosed with dementia. Geriatrician Susan Kurrle, who never met the 95-year-old but reviewed her medical records, believed she had the “behavioural version of frontotemporal dementia”, and it was “moderate to moderately severe”.
“She was still mobile, but she was certainly unable to necessarily understand what was happening to her and to comply with instructions,” she said.
Kurrle gave evidence Nowland’s behaviour had changed “dramatically” in the three months before her death and she was prescribed anti-psychotic medication risperidone in late April 2023 to help her aggression.
The court heard Nowland was recorded as having “weak grip” and problems with dexterity. White’s barrister said hospital notes from April 28, 2023, recorded Nowland as punching, picking up her walker and throwing it, trying to bite and pulling out an intravenous line.
“Would you accept, as a general proposition, those actions don’t seem consistent with weak grip or problems with dexterity?” Edwards asked.
Kurrle said if someone was anxious, distressed, afraid or angry, they could “get amazing strength”.
She agreed with Edwards’ suggestion that people with dementia could have impulsivity, irrationality and disinhibition, and these could “manifest themselves in unpredictability of behaviour”.
The Crown alleges White was criminally negligent or committed an unlawful and dangerous act. The defence argues White acted within his duty as a police officer.
The trial continues before Justice Ian Harrison.
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