Yuendumu officer denies telling family police would hunt Kumanjayi Walker ‘like a dog’

The officer in charge of a remote community where an indigenous man was shot dead by police has denied telling his family a task force would ‘hunt him down like a dog’ and ‘might be able to shoot him too’.

Sergeant Julie Frost. Picture: Amanda Parkinson

The officer in charge of a remote community where an Indigenous man was shot dead by police has denied telling his family a taskforce would “hunt him down like a dog” and “might be able to shoot him, too”.

Sergeant Julie Frost also told the inquest into Kumanjayi Walker’s death that she was sorry community members were not told of his death on the night of the shooting.

Sergeant Frost was asked about a conversation she had with Lottie Robertson – the grandmother of Walker’s girlfriend, Rakeisha Robertson – on the morning after he had been shot dead by Constable Zachary Rolfe.

According to police body-worn video footage taken of the conversation, Ms Robertson said to her: “I heard you say that they were gonna bring a taskforce here to look for him and hunt him down like a dog, and you said they might be able to shoot him too.”

Sergeant Frost denied she had made the comment. “I said to Lottie on the Thursday night if he doesn’t hand himself in within two hours, I’m going to have to get the Alice Springs police out and they’ll go in a lot harder than what community members would,” she told the inquest.

“Your honour, I know that doesn’t sound great, but it was my way of appealing to (Lottie’s husband) Eddie and Lottie that this had become very serious – it was a plea to get them to bring Kumanjayi in.”

The discussion had taken place after Walker attacked two Yuendumu police officers – including Sergeant Frost’s domestic partner, Senior Constable Christopher Hand – with an axe when they tried to arrest him at the Robertsons’ house on November 6, 2019.

Asked by counsel assisting the coroner, Peggy Dwyer, if she had used the words “hunt him down like a dog”, Sergeant Frost replied: “That’s not terminology I would ever use and I’d have to apologise to Eddie and Lottie if it was taken to mean that. That’s not what I said.”

Constable Rolfe was part of the Immediate Response Team sent to Yuendumu from Alice Springs to arrest Walker after the axe incident. He shot Walker dead just after 7pm on November 9, 2019, after Walker stabbed him with a pair of surgical scissors.

Sergeant Frost told the inquest that at a briefing she had given the IRT at Yuendumu Police Station less than 30 minutes before the shooting, the officers had been told to conduct high visibility police overnight before gathering at the station at 5am with local officer Constable Felix Alefaio, who would help effect Walker’s arrest.

She said she had been asked by IRT member Constable James Kirstenfeldt what they should do if they came across Walker.

She had said “By all means, lock him up”.

Sergeant Frost said she was “shocked” and “angry” when she learned Walker had been shot.

“Not for a minute did I think that there would be a shooting,” she said. “I thought there were sufficient resources to not have any use of force really.”

When asked why police had not informed the community about Walker’s death until the morning after the shooting, Sergeant Frost said she had worked as a nurse at Wadeye in 2002 when a community member had been shot dead by police and there had been an angry response, including riots’ she was concerned about a similar reaction in Yuendumu.

Matt Cunningham is Sky News northern Australia correspondent