<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <docID>332820</docID> <postdate>2024-11-11 14:44:49</postdate> <headline>‘I needed to’: cop’s defence to tasering elderly woman</headline> <body><p><img class="size-full wp-image-332821" src="https://citynews.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/20241111143248905247-original-resized.jpg" alt="" width="900" height="600" /></p> <caption>Senior Constable Kristian White is accused of manslaughter over the tasering of an elderly woman. (Steve Markham/AAP PHOTOS)</caption> <p><span class="kicker-line">By <strong>Miklos Bolza</strong> in Sydney</span></p> <p><strong>A police officer believed he needed to stun an elderly woman with dementia symptoms after numerous verbal warnings failed to get her to relinquish a knife, a jury has heard.</strong></p> <p>Senior Constable Kristian James Samuel White used his Taser on great-grandmother Clare Nowland at the Yallambee Lodge aged-care home in the southern NSW town of Cooma in the early hours of May 17, 2023.</p> <p>The 95-year-old hit her head on the floor when she fell and had an inoperable bleed on the brain, dying at Cooma Hospital a week after the incident.</p> <p>The 34-year-old appeared in the NSW Supreme Court on Monday, when his barrister Troy Edwards SC said his client had a sworn duty as a police officer to counteract the risk that she posed.</p> <p>"As a violent confrontation was imminent and to prevent injury to police, the Taser was discharged," he told the jury.</p> <p>It was not in dispute that Mrs Nowland died because she was hit with his client's weapon, Mr Edwards said.</p> <p>But White had a duty to protect others from injury or death and to prevent a breach of the peace, he told the jury.</p> <p>Mrs Nowland had taken her four-wheeled walking frame into a kitchen in the aged-care home about 3am, opening drawers and the fridge.</p> <p>A registered nurse later saw her holding two steak knives and a jar of prunes.</p> <p>Mrs Nowland went into rooms where three residents were sleeping, turning on the lights, sitting on their beds and eventually throwing a knife at a carer who was trying to get her to drop the weapons.</p> <p>White was called to the facility with his partner and two paramedics after a triple-zero operator received reports that an aggressive patient had been raising a knife at staff, prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC said.</p> <p>They cornered the 95-year-old in a nurses' station, where several verbal warnings were issued and White's partner tried unsuccessfully to kick the wheels out from her walker, jurors heard.</p> <p>"A short time later the accused said 'bugger it' and deliberately discharged his taser towards Mrs Nowland," Mr Hatfield said.</p> <p>Back at Cooma police station, White allegedly spoke to one of his colleagues about the incident, the prosecutor said.</p> <p>"I've had a look and supposedly we aren't meant to tase elderly people," he allegedly said.</p> <p>"In this circumstance, I needed to."</p> <p>Mr Hatfield said White was criminally negligent by breaching his duty of care to Mrs Nowland not to injure or harm her.</p> <p>He also argued the police officer committed unlawful assault or battery, which a reasonable person would have realised would give rise to a risk of serious injury.</p> <p>The trial continues.</p> </body>