Cop’s macabre warning over axe-wielding Kumanjayi Walker prophetic

A policeman whom Kumanjayi Walker threatened with an axe told the teen’s grandmother the ‘next time he does that, he might get shot’, a jury has heard.

Stills from body-worn camera footage of Kumanjayi Walker confronting police officers with and axe on November 6, 2019. Picture: Courts NT/Supplied

A Yuendumu-based police officer whom Kumanjayi Walker threatened with an axe told the Aboriginal teenager’s cultural grandmother that the “next time he does that, he might get shot”, a jury has heard.

The macabre warning came after the 19-year-old had leapt shirtless from a darkened room brandishing a hatchet and lunged at Senior Constable First Class Christopher Hand and Senior Constable Lanyon Smith. The pair had gone to Walker’s girlfriend’s house in the troubled outback community of Yuendumu to ­arrest him for breaching a court order.

Both told the Northern Territory Supreme Court they did not draw their weapons when Walker confronted them because they believed he wanted to escape rather than cause harm.

Three days later Constable Zachary Rolfe shot Walker three times after the latter stabbed him in the shoulder with scissors during at attempted arrest gone wrong. Constable Rolfe is on trial for murder over the shooting death of Walker in November 2019. Prosecutors say only the first shot was justifiable.

To prove its case, the crown will have to persuade the jury that Constable Rolfe was not acting in self-defence, nor acting reasonably in the course of his duties, nor acting in good faith while exercising police powers.

For a murder conviction, the jury will need to be certain beyond reasonable doubt that Constable Rolfe intended to kill Walker when he fired shots two and three.

Constable Rolfe also faces the lesser charges of manslaughter and recklessly engaging in conduct causing death.

After the axe incident, Constable Hand wrote in an email to superiors that he didn’t think Walker “wanted to chop us”.

Under cross-examination, he acknowledged freezing during the encounter. “I froze, which I’m not proud of, but it is what it is,” he said in a police interview.

“I was yeah, frightened, you know, fear. Fearful that you know, we’re going to (get) hit, not necessarily killed, but you know, severe damage, probably to your head.”

Constable Smith was captured on body-worn video footage telling Constable Hand that he “begged for mercy”.

“I was stuck in the corner, and I just begged for mercy,” he said.

Constables Hand and Smith returned to the scene shortly after to collect the axe from Walker and speak to his partner’s grandmother. “So next time he does that, he might get shot,” Constable Hand told her.

“In Alice Springs, community policeman are different to town policeman.”

Prosecutor Philip Strickland SC has been eager to show the jury that policing remote Aboriginal communities requires a soft touch and that Constable Rolfe, who is ex-military and was a member of a town-based Immediate Response Team, did not follow his training.

“Working in remote communities is – can be — quite, quite challenging,” Constable Hand told the court. “You live there, and you want to, if you need to arrest somebody or deal with somebody, you want to do it as peacefully as possible, without the use of unnecessary ­violence because that can have consequences later on with (the) family.”

Senior Constable Lanyon Smith said Warlpiri men used ­violence for show. “They brandish nulla-nulla, sticks, trampoline poles,” he said.

Zachary Rolfe leaves Darwin Supreme Court. Picture: Amanda Parkinson

“In their minds, they’re trying to impress upon their family that they’re a strong person.”

Constable Rolfe’s defence lawyer, David Edwardson QC, argued that the “axe incident” materially changed the way police were obliged to deal with Walker because it marked a serious escalation from his previous behaviour.

“We can see from the explanation that you’ve given to this jury, everything turns on the time, place and circumstance of a particular incident … how one matter might present to one police officer on a particular day might be quite different to another police officer … (and) the extent to which the threat is imminent and deployed might be different on one occasion from another?” he asked Senior Constable Smith, who agreed.

The case is likely to turn on what Constable Rolfe perceived when firing the fatal shots.

The trial continues.

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