By Sarah McPhee
Warning: Graphic content
A colleague of the police officer who Tasered 95-year-old Clare Nowland in a NSW nursing home last year has told a court she was frightened of being stabbed by the great-grandmother, who looked at her with a “wave of darkness” as she attempted to seize the knife.
Giving evidence in the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday, Senior Constable Jessica Pank, who was present at the scene, also rejected the prosecutor’s suggestion that Nowland at one stage left the knife on her walker as she raised her arm.
Senior Constable Jessica Pank leaves the NSW Supreme Court after giving evidence at her colleague’s trial.Credit: Edwina Pickles
Pank’s colleague, Senior Constable Kristian James Samuel White, has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter, arguing he was acting within his duty to protect the peace and prevent injury when he discharged his Taser at Cooma’s Yallambee Lodge on May 17, 2023.
The two police officers joined two paramedics that morning in responding to a triple-zero call from a nurse at the facility reporting a “very aggressive resident” raising “two little knives” at staff. Nowland was found sitting inside an administrative room with her walker, holding a knife.
Clare Nowland died in hospital a week after being Tasered.
Pank said Nowland did not respond to requests to drop the knife and moved slowly towards them. “I remember saying to Kristian White that I think I could get the knife off her,” she said.
Pank, who was an acting sergeant and the superior officer that day, agreed with Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, that she had rejected White’s suggestion to get Nowland out of the room. “I was afraid that if we’d let her further out, we’d have less time and there was more risk to persons,” she said.
Pank said Nowland “would hold the knife up towards my hands … any time I moved close in”. She said she noticed White “had the Taser out” and remembered suggesting he use the warning arc, to which Nowland “jumped a little bit” in response. Pank said Nowland was using both hands on her walker and she had pushed its wheel with her foot.
“I remember her holding the knife up and making stabbing motions in the air towards me as I was doing that,” she said. “I thought I was going to be stabbed.”
Kristian White arrives at the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney.Credit: Kate Geraghty
The prosecutor played a clip of the police body-worn vision of the incident, including one of the moments Nowland raised her hand. Hatfield suggested Nowland “didn’t have the knife in her hand” and that it remained on the walker.
“She’s got a knife in her right hand,” Pank replied. “I don’t agree it’s on the walker. She’s holding it, it’s facing down.” She disagreed with the prosecutor that there was “no danger” she would be stabbed at various points.
The court has heard White said “bugger it” before he Tasered Nowland.
“I remember Clare seizing up and slowly falling backwards,” Pank said.
The court heard Pank was later asked by police whether she was “comfortable as the supervisor, and with the training that you had, that it was appropriate that … White Tasered Ms Nowland.”
“I was, I was comfortable with the situation, um, yeah,” she replied, according to a statement quoted by White’s barrister, Troy Edwards, SC. Edwards asked: “When you say you were comfortable with the situation, you certainly weren’t happy about it, were you?”
“No,” Pank replied.
She agreed with the defence barrister’s suggestions that the knife was sharper than she had thought and that she wanted to resolve the situation by getting the weapon.
The court heard that in her statement after the incident, Pank said: “When she [Nowland] looked at me when I got close, it was this wave of darkness that went over her, went over her face, which did put a little bit of fear in me of being close to her.”
Asked by Edwards if “what you were feeling is frightened”, she replied, “Yes.”
Earlier on Thursday, paramedic Kingsley Newman said he was asked by his colleague, Anna Hofner, to draw up the sedative droperidol before Nowland was Tasered.
Paramedics Kingsley Newman (left) and Anna Hofner (centre) arrive to give evidence at the trial of Senior Constable Kristian White.Credit: Kate Geraghty
Newman said the 95-year-old was left with the probes of the Taser lodged in her pyjamas, a burn mark, a “large” five to six-centimetre hematoma – blood pooled under the skin – and facial droop “indicating a pretty significant brain bleed”.
Hofner said Nowland made “slow” movements into a standing position, but raised the knife “fast”. She gave evidence if Nowland had “tried to strike out with the knife, I could’ve potentially been hit”, but later agreed with the prosecutor’s suggestions that “there was no danger of any of you being struck” and “at no time were you in immediate fear, as you could’ve easily walked away.”
The prosecutor asked: “If you waited long enough?”
“Possibly, but how long would we have had to wait?” Hofner replied.
She agreed with White’s barrister that walking away would not have resolved the situation as Nowland “would’ve still had the knife”.
The trial continues.
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