Cop denies superior made threat to ‘hunt Kumanjayi Walker down and shoot him like a dog’

A police officer who was threatened with an axe by Kumanjayi Walker three days before his death has denied a superior threatened to ‘hunt him down and shoot him like a dog’.

A police officer Kumanjayi Walker threatened with an axe three days before his death has denied a superior threatened to “hunt him down and shoot him like a dog” as retribution.

Remote Sergeant Lanyon Smith was one of two officers confronted by an axe-wielding Mr Walker on November 6, 2019.

Sergeant Smith gave evidence in the Alice Springs Local Court at an inquest into his death on Friday.

Sergeant Smith told the court he had been investigating a nearby break-in when he went to arrest Mr Walker on an outstanding warrant after he absconded from a rehab facility the previous week.

He said he arrived at house 577 in Yuendumu shortly before 6.30pm and was trying to stop Mr Walker’s girlfriend Rakeisha Robertson from hindering the arrest as she encouraged him to go “out the window”.

“Then Rakeisha leaves and I think she calls out ‘Oh Mum’ and then goes and gets (her mother) Lottie, they come back in and they’re standing to the right of me,” he said.

“At the time I wasn’t too sure what he was doing but, now I find out he was searching for the axe and then I distinctly remember hearing, when he grabbed the axe, the metal ting sound on the concrete of the floor.

“So he’s holding it in his hand, I back out before Chris does — Constable Hand — I’m in one left hand corner, Chris is on the right and I gave him a little, gentle nudge, to make sure he doesn’t hit the wall and that puts him into the lounge room space.”

Sergeant Smith said he then put his hands in the air “to say ‘I’ve got nothing, I’m not a threat’”, as Mr Walker advanced towards them out of the room holding the axe.

“He passes me really quickly, like he moves on from me and then he engages with Chris Hand at the doorway to the kitchen,” he said.

“They are holding each other, sort of wrestling for a second, second and-a-half, something like that.

“Chris lets go and then Kumanjayi runs out through the kitchen and then drops the axe outside the kitchen on the porch. We both give chase.”

Remote Sergeant Lanyon Smith leaves the Alice Springs Local Court after giving evidence on Friday.

Sergeant Smith said at the time he thought Mr Walker “was maybe going to hurt me” but also that “this isn’t really happening and he’s not going to do anything”.

“Part of me was thinking that ‘It’s a threat, is he really going to hurt me?’ — but I knew him, he knew me, I was hoping that that didn’t happen, and nothing happened,” he said.

“As I explained in the trial, it’s more of a show because he had to have been aware that Rakeisha was in the same room at that point with us, and Lottie.”

Sergeant Smith said he did not draw his Glock at the time because he was concerned about the safety of the other people in the room and feared other community members “could have turned on us”.

“I must have been processing everything, there’s different things being processed,” he said.

“You’re in shock, adrenaline went really quick, and you might think that what I’m saying I’ve thought about later on, however, the fact that after Kumanjayi drops the axe, the first thing was then we continued on and tried to apprehend him.

“Like, we just didn’t stand there and dwell about it. We reset and continued on.”

Sergeant Smith said he later had a conversation with the officer in charge at Yuendumu at the time, Sergeant Julie Frost, who he described as “professional, but was trying to emphasise the point of how serious the incident was with Kumanjayi coming at two police officers with an axe”.

Counsel assisting the Coroner, Patrick Coleridge, asked Sergeant Smith whether Sergeant Frost had mentioned “the possibility that Alice Springs police might be called in if you were unable to arrest Kumanjayi”, and Sergeant Smith said she “could easily have said that”.

“Do you have any memory of her saying, ‘If he doesn’t hand himself in, we’ll call in the (Immediate Response Team) and they’ll hunt him down and shoot him like a dog?” Mr Coleridge asked.

But Sergeant Smith said he had never even heard of the IRT prior to the day of the shooting.

“Those words ‘hunt him like a dog’, that doesn’t make — I have never heard those words come out of her voice,” he said.

Sergeant Smith said he later went back to the scene of the burglary he had attended earlier that day and dusted for fingerprints, which cleared Mr Walker, but implicated another, younger teenage boy who “idolised Kumanjayi”.

Kumanjayi Walker.

He said he “saw parallels” between the boy’s life and Mr Walker’s and was “concerned that he could go down the same way” and become violent.

“Where is he right now?” Mr Coleridge asked.

“I’m not 100 per cent certain, but I think he might be incarcerated at the moment,” Sergeant Smith said.

“So, despite everything, the death, the committal, the trial, media attention, Kumanjayi Walker’s story is quietly being repeated in Yuendumu?” Mr Coleridge asked.

“In that particular youth, yes, I believe so,” Sergeant Smith replied.

The inquest continues on Monday.