The family of slain Aboriginal teenager Kumanjayi Walker tried to convince him to hand himself in to police in the days before he was killed, a court has heard.

February 10, 2022

Traditional owners tried to convince slain Aboriginal teenager Kumanjayi Walker to give himself up to police in the days before he was fatally shot, a court has been told.

The troubled 19-year-old died on November 9, 2019, after he stabbed Constable Zachary Rolfe with a pair of scissors during a failed arrest attempt.

Rolfe, 30, is fighting a murder charge in the Supreme Court in Darwin. He is accused of unlawfully shooting Mr Walker as the teen resisted arrest.

Three days before he died, Mr Walker aggressively threatened two other policemen with an axe in Yuendumu, 290km northwest of Alice Springs.

They had been attempting to take him into custody at the home of his partner Rakeisha Robertson’s grandmother Lottie Robertson.

Lottie Robertson says that after the “axe incident” some of Yuendumu’s male community members tried to convince Mr Walker to hand himself in to police.

“We tried very hard to talk to him,” she said on Thursday.

“For cultural reason I was not able to talk to the young fella.

“He never said anything.”

But she did tell Mr Walker the axe incident was unacceptable.

“I told him to stop. It was dangerous for him because he will get himself into more trouble,” she said.

She also told the teen he should leave her home, where he had been staying.

“I told him you have to go and stay with family now,” she said.

Police visited her home after the incident and asked the Robertson family to convince Mr Walker to hand himself in.

Body-worn camera footage shows Mr Walker picking up the axe, raising it above his head and running at the officers, who had cornered him in a bedroom.

He dashes past the officers out of the house and into surrounding bushland.

Detective Acting Senior Sergeant Evan Kelly said police should have been alerted to the threat Mr Walker posed sooner.

He led a patrol to arrest Mr Walker a day after the axe incident when the teen was listed as “a job” for the Alice Springs police.

He told the court the station had not been alerted about the axe incident before Mr Walker was placed on the arrest list for November 7.

“Given the significance of the incident and what occurred I would have assumed that Alice Springs and desert stations in general would have been informed,” he said.

“The community members from Yuendumu regularly come to Alice Springs.

“Obviously for risk assessment and mitigation we should have been informed just in case he came to Alice Springs.”

Detective Kelly agreed with Rolfe’s lawyer David Edwardson QC that the axe incident was a confronting, volatile and potentially dangerous.

The trial continues.