Confrontation a first for policeman Brent Wyndham who shot JC dead

The constable who shot and killed a 29-year-old Aboriginal woman as she held scissors and a bread knife in a residential street had never before confronted an uncooperative suspect armed with a weapon, an inquest has been told.

Show of support: Constable Brent Wyndham, fourth from the left, arrives to give evidence at the inquest into the death of Aboriginal woman JC in Geraldton. Picture: Graeme Gibbons

The constable who shot and killed a 29-year-old Aboriginal woman as she held scissors and a bread knife in a residential street had never before confronted an uncooperative suspect armed with a weapon, an inquest has been told.

Constable Brent Wyndham said on Thursday that he was ­required to do a week of bespoke training designed only for him after a police internal affairs investigation found he had failed in his duties on September 17, 2019, when he shot the woman, known for cultural reasons as JC, on a residential street in the West Australian farming and crayfishing town of Geraldton.

A jury found Constable Wyndham not guilty of murder and not guilty of manslaughter in 2021. He returned to work in Geraldton where he received both a reprimand from internal affairs and a promotion to the rank of senior constable.

The bespoke training Constable Wyndham was required to undergo on his return to work included scenarios with actors, but none involved a knife and none replicated a street scene similar to the one in which he shot and killed JC. When counsel assisting the coroner Rachael Young SC asked Constable Wyndham if it would have assisted him to have replicated the fatal scenario, he replied “yes”, but added that he just did the training he was required to do.

Constable Wyndham told the coroner on Thursday that he made a series of “split-second” ­decisions as the police car he was a passenger in arrived at the scene.

This included a decision to get out of the car and another split-second decision to draw his weapon. However, he said his decision to fire the gun was a conscious one.

“I thought I was going to get stabbed,” he said.

CCTV from a house on the corner of the street where JC was shot shows Constable Wyndham fired his gun at her 16 or 17 seconds after arriving at the scene. She had been walking with a serrated knife in her right hand and a pair of scissors in her left hand.

He told the inquest that before the day he shot JC, he had encountered people with sharp-edged weapons “many times” but “I had never had anyone refuse to drop it when we have rocked up”.

JC was known to longtime Geraldton police officers as a deeply troubled drug user who had been suicidal and suffered ­serious mental health problems. Constable Wyndham said he did not know her.

He had interviewed her once, years earlier, over an allegation that she had slashed car tyres, but he did not recognise her during the brief exchange that ended in her death.

When Constable Wyndham arrived, two officers were already at the scene, including Adrian Barker who was ranked higher than him and had been a police ­officer for longer.

Mr Barker had bundled JC into a police van 10 days earlier when she was suicidal and taken her to hospital, waiting with her while she was medicated.

She had responded well to Mr Barker on that day and walked into the hospital emergency department freely, albeit with Mr Barker at her side, giving her ­information and instructions. JC had squeezed his hand as he waited with her and hugged him as he left.

The inquest has previously heard that when Constable Wyndham arrived at the scene where JC was standing with a knife, Mr Barker was trying to talk to her and said things such as “drop the knife, darl”.

Constable Wyndham said Mr Barker, who has since left the police force, was too close to JC. He has previously called him inept. However, JC’s family has personally thanked Mr Barker for his empathy to JC.

Constable Wyndham said he arrived at the scene without a plan and yelled at JC, giving her four commands in a row: “drop the knife, get on the ground, you’re under arrest get on the ground, drop the f..king knife”.

Since returning to work. Constable Wyndham said he had completed a training course on how to start a conversation with suspects that can de-escalate difficult situations. He told the inquest he found the course helpful.