NT police exhausted, overwhelmed on day Kumanjayi Walker died, inquiry hears

The officer in charge of a remote NT community has told an inquest she could not remember if she had had any sleep the night before Constable Zachary Rolfe shot dead Kumanjayi Walker.

Sergeant Julie Frost has told an inquest police were exhausted and overwhelmed on the day an Indigenous man was shot dead. Picture: Amanda Parkinson

The officer in charge of a remote Northern Territory community has told an inquest police were exhausted and overwhelmed on the day an Indigenous man was shot dead.

Sergeant Julie Frost told the inquiry she could not remember if she had had any sleep the night before Constable Zachary Rolfe shot dead Kumanjayi Walker in Yuendumu on November 9, 2019.

Sgt Frost said she and Senior Constable Christopher Hand had been up all night attending break-ins in Yuendumu and a domestic violence incident at Yuelamu, 70 kilometres away.

Police at Yuendumu – about 300km northwest of Alice Springs – had already been stretched thin in the days before the shooting. Two of the community’s five officers had been sent to Nyirripi – 190km west – to attend to riots. There had also been a string of break-ins and property damage at the nurses’ accommodation in Yuendumu.

Sgt Frost called herself off-duty just before 6am on November 9, when she sent an email to Superintendent Jody Nobbs in Alice Springs requesting extra resources.

At 10:54am she received a text message from Constable Mark Parbs – one of the officers who had just returned from Nyirripi – telling her the community’s medical staff were about to leave.

“Hey, I see you guys were called out last night so I’m not calling you now,” Constable Parbs wrote. “FYI, Cassie from the clinic pulled us up before here in Yuendumu. She’s informed us that her bosses have directed clinic staff to start packing due to break-ins at their properties. She has not stated they’re leaving community, but it’s a possibility at this stage.”

When Sgt Frost arrived at Yuendumu Police Station just after 11am, Constable Parbs told her the nurses had been directed to leave the community.

She called Cassandra Holland, the on-call clinic nurse.

“I asked her what was going on and why they were leaving and what the contingency was for any medical help that people need overnight,” Sgt Frost told the inquest.

“She said there’s an expectation on the Yuelamu nurses that they will cover any call outs for Yuendumu.”

Sgt Frost said she was also told police would have to accompany the Yuelamu nurses to any jobs in Yuendumu.

“(That was) absolutely not going to happen,” she said.

“We did not have the staff for it, we had enough of our own issues to deal with.”

Sgt Frost said she was disappointed police had not been consulted before the decision was made for the nurses to leave.

“The fact that we would then probably be called on if someone needed medical assistance or Yuelamu staff would be called on depending on the type of medical assistance (needed), and the expectation that police would have to accompany Yuelamu staff to Yuendumu, that had a significant resourcing implication,” she said.

Sgt Frost had several subsequent phone conversations with Supt Nobbs where it was agreed the police Immediate Response Team – including Constable Rolfe – would be sent to Yuendumu from Alice Springs.

Just after 7pm that night Constable Rolfe shot Walker three times after he stabbed the officer with a pair of surgical scissors when he tried to arrest him.

There were no medical staff in the community when the shooting occurred. Police including Constable Rolfe performed first aid at the Yuendumu Police Station but Walker died at 8:36pm. Two nurses from Yuelamu arrived about 30 minutes later.

Earlier, Sgt Frost told the inquiry she had worked with the IRT on a previous occasion in 2018, when there had been a riot involving about 300 people in Yuendumu.

“(There were) a lot of kids milling around as well, a lot of direction to move on and taking weapons from people,” she said of the 2018 incident.

“I think that one resulted in one of the community members grabbing a car and at one point driving it towards a group of people.

“Luckily she stopped without hitting anyone and I think that was something where we were able to arrest her straight away. I think that was something that made the community a bit calmer.”

Asked by counsel assisting the Coroner, Peggy Dwyer, what had prompted the disturbance, Sgt Frost said: “A lot of it is sparked from something as simple as a Facebook post and quite quickly that would progress into family fighting and that type of stuff.”

In March a jury found Constable Rolfe not guilty of murder.

The inquest before Coroner Elisabeth Armitage continues.

Matt Cunningham is the Sky News Northern Australia Correspondent