A Northern Territory policeman who shot an Indigenous man dead told his team they were on a mission to arrest the young man but it wasn’t correct, an inquest has been told.
Senior police had actually ordered the four men sent from Alice Springs to patrol Yuendumu’s streets on November 9, 2019 after a series of break-ins caused its medical team to flee.
The plan was to arrest Kumanjayi Walker the following morning but instead Constable Zachary Rolfe took it upon himself to lead the men to the 19-year-old, who he then shot three times inside his grandmother’s house.
The Warlpiri man died about an hour later on the floor of the local police station.
Constable Adam Eberl was wrestling with Mr Walker in a bedroom when Const Rolfe shot him.
He told an inquest into the death on Monday that a senior officer didn’t provide a briefing before their deployment, which was unusual.
The job was left up to Const Rolfe, who showed the men a body worn camera footage of Mr Walker using an axe three days earlier to threaten two other policemen to evade arrest.
Const Eberl assumed Const Rolfe had been appointed the team’s leader and that the men’s only job was to arrest Mr Walker based on the briefing.
He said he wasn’t told Superintendent Jody Nobbs had ordered the men to patrol Yuendumu’s streets on November 9, not arrest Mr Walker.
He also wasn’t made aware about the plan for the team to help local officers arrest Mr Walker at 5am the following morning, when he was likely to be sleepy and not resist being taken into custody.
Const Rolfe led discussions with Yuendumu’s senior police officer, Sergeant Julie Frost, when the team arrived in the community.
Const Eberl said he wasn’t told about written orders she provided, and didn’t see an email with the information that was sent to him, before the men arrived in Yuendumu and departed to arrest Mr Walker.
He agreed with counsel assisting Peggy Dwyer that when the team left Yuendumu’s police station they were on a mission to arrest Mr Walker, and that if he’d known about Superintendent Nobbs’ orders he would have followed them.
Asked if he was disappointed he hadn’t been made aware about the plan he said: “Definitely, yes.”
He agreed it was dangerous for the men to have been operating without a proper line of command or leader, and it would’ve been useful to know Mr Walker suffered from mental health issues, was partially deaf and likely had impulse control issues potentially related to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
Const Eberl and Const Rolfe entered the house where they found Mr Walker six minutes after leaving the police station.
The inquest heard the men didn’t tell the teen why they were there and hadn’t adequately sought permission to enter the building before doing so.
Mr Walker resisted arrest and stabbed Const Rolfe in the shoulder as the men tried to handcuff him.
After Const Rolfe shot him, the men rushed Mr Walker to the police station where the team tried to save his life in the absence of a medical team in the community.
The inquest heard Const Eberl comforted the teen by stroking his head but didn’t consider letting his family members into the station over safety concerns.
He agreed that Mr Walker’s death was a tragedy and there had been no urgency to arrest him.
It would have been better if a local officer who knew him had been present when they went to the house, he said.
He also agreed that Mr Walker may not have died if the men had more information about him and had seen the written plan.
