Bali cop bashing: Sara Connor and David Taylor re-enact events
SARA Connor and David Taylor appear to strike an officer with a walkie talkie and beer bottle during a re-enactment of events the night a cop was killed.
BYRON Bay woman Sara Connor and her British boyfriend David Taylor have re-enacted scenes on a Kuta Beach where a Bali police officer was allegedly murdered.
The couple also re-enacted scenes at the Kubu Kauh Beach Inn in Kuta, where the couple stayed on the night of the policeman’s death and Jimbaran, where they are alleged to have disposed of their bloody clothes.
The media was not allowed to the scenes at Kubu Kauh Beach Inn.
In total the couple took part in 68 scenes before being taken away to a police station.
In dramatic pictures at Kuta Beach earlier, Connor appeared to be hitting an officer posing as dead police officer Wayan Sudarsa with a walkie talkie.
In another re-enactment, David Taylor appeared to strike the officer with a broken Bintang beer bottle as the man lay face-down on the beach.
The couple embraced and kissed at the beach as they showed the lead up to their paths crossing with police officer Sudarsa.
The couple’s handcuffs were undone for the re-enactment this morning.
Both were wearing orange clothes, declaring them suspects and each wore a placard around their neck with their name.
The role of the dead policeman was played by another officer.
It is the first time in 13 days that the couple have been together and allowed to communicate since their detention as murder suspects.
Flanked by translators and heavy police presence the couple was asked to show, for police cameras, exactly what happened on the night of the officer’s death.
As the couple entered the beach gate, Connor rested her head on Taylor’s shoulder and he kissed her forehead.
At times Connor looked bewildered as camera flashes and shouting punctuated the pre-dawn darkness.
The couple embraced and kissed on the beach.
A meeting with Sudarsa was acted out then scenes of the police officer lying on the sand.
At one stage Connor was on top of him and was seen acting out hitting him with a walkie talkie.
Taylor too was on top of the officer in one scene.
Then Taylor lay face up on the sand, the officer on top of him as Taylor appeared to act out hitting the officer about the head with a beer bottle.
The officer was holding Taylor’s right arm while Taylor wielded the beer bottle with his left arm.
Connor and Taylor were brought to the beach for the re-enactment at 4am local time.
The couple arrived in separate police tactical vehicles called Rantis.
Connor’s lawyer Erwin Siregar, who is at the police reconstruction, said this morning that his client maintains that she was trying to protect the victim not kill him.
And she maintains all she was doing was trying to separate her boyfriend and the police officer who were fighting on the beach.
“If you see from the reconstruction this morning, what my client did is try to separate and protect the victim so that’s why from the first investigation, second investigation and then third and also this morning I am not seeing that my client should be involved in this murder,” Mr Siregar said.
He said Connor was not involved in all scenes and that after trying to separate the victim and Taylor she had gone off to continue searching for her lost handbag.
“So many reconstructions when there is fighting between David and the victim, Sara doesn’t know,” Mr Siregar said.
And he denied a police allegation, that Connor hit the officer with his own walkie talkie.
In one scene Connor is seen straddling the officer, who is lying on the ground, and holding up a walkie talkie.
Mr Siregar said she was throwing it away not hitting the officer.
Denpasar police chief Hadi Purnomo claimed that 43 scenes had been reenacted on the beach this morning and some had not matched with the interrogation statements of the suspects.
And he alleged that some of Connor’s actions at the reenactment were slightly different to those she had explained in her earlier interrogation statements to police.
He said that the two suspects would later be confronted with each other’s different versions of events.
Mr Purnomo claimed Connor was involved in the murder and had helped. He asserted in one scene Connor, who was sitting on top of the officer, had hit the officer with his own walkie talkie.
But Connor’s lawyer strongly denies this, saying she was throwing it away, not hitting him with it.
Mr Purnomo said only about two per cent of what was said in the reenactment was different to the statements.
Taylor’s lawyer, Haposan Sihombing, said that immediately after re-enacting the alleged bashing of the officer, there was a scene when Taylor and Connor cuddled on the beach.
Mr Sihombing said he had asked whether the investigators allege this happened on the night of the officer’s death and they said yes.
It was Mr Sihombing who asked the police to open the couple’s handcuffs.
“After the handcuffs were opened they look very intimate. Maybe after they don’t meet for days they look very intimate. It was spontaneous, they looked like they love each other. They were seen very intimate when the handcuffs were opened,” Mr Sihombing said.
He said that Taylor had told him some parts of the reenactment were not correct.
It comes as a fund set up to raise money for 45-year-old Connor and her family in the wake of her detention in Bali has now requested that all donations go to a similar fund set up for the widow of the murdered police officer.
The Sara Fund, set up by friends and family in Byron Bay, had been raising money to pay for Connor’s family and two young sons, aged nine and 11, but late last week the amount of money it raised was removed from the web page.
And now any donations are directed to the fund in Bali for the police officer.
“Sara thanks you for your support but requests that any donations in the future be directed to the fund established by the widow of Wayan Sudarsa … a fund supported by Sara and her family,” the website now says.
A group of UK expats in Bali and a charity called Soleman set up a fund last week to raise money for Sudarsa’s family and to assist with his children’s education and university fees.
Last Friday The Sara Fund had raised $7182 before the tally was removed from the site. At the same time the fund for Sudarsa’s family was $7341.
Late yesterday the Sudarsa family fund had raised more than $10,000.
Connor denies any role in the murder, saying she tried to separate her boyfriend and the police officer after the fight broke out.
Officer Sudarsa was brutally and repeatedly bashed to death with a beer bottle, his own binoculars and a mobile phone in the early hours of August 17. Connor’s handbag, NSW driver’s licence and ATM card were found at the scene.
Two days later Connor and Taylor were detained as they attempted to go to the Australian Consulate.
They have been named as suspects on murder, assault and beating charges but are not charged. The murder charge carries a maximum 15 years in jail.
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