Constable Zachary Rolfe’s former boss says he would have been “ready to draw (his firearm) at a moment’s notice” if he had been searching for Kumanjayi Walker.

February 11, 2022

Zachary Rolfe’s former boss says he would have been ready to draw his gun if he was searching for Kumanjayi Walker on the night the Aboriginal teenager was fatally shot.

Detective Acting Senior Sergeant Evan Kelly also told the Northern Territory Supreme Court officers were generally trained to fire two shots when confronted by an offender armed with an edged weapon.

“Shooting at the centre of body mass is the most effective way of gaining subject control by immediate incapacitation,” he said on Thursday.

Mr Walker died on November 9, 2019, after Constable Rolfe, 30, fatally shot him during a failed arrest attempt in the outback community of Yuendumu, 290km northwest of Alice Springs.

The first of the three shots fired after Mr Walker, 19, inflicted a minor stab wound on the constable’s left shoulder with scissors did not kill the teen and is not the subject of the murder charge Rolfe is fighting in Darwin.

The charge relates to Rolfe’s second and third shots, which the Crown says were not legally justified.

They were fired when Mr Walker was on the ground with Constable Adam Eberl “effectively restraining” him with his right arm pinned beneath him, prosecutor Philip Strickland SC has said.

Det Kelly said that if he had been in Rolfe’s situation when he entered the darkened home looking for Mr Walker he “would be prepared and ready to draw (his firearm) at a moment’s notice”.

The teenager had been hiding from police after a week earlier removing an electronic monitoring device and fleeing an Alice Springs alcohol rehabilitation clinic to attend his uncle’s funeral, which was held on the day of the shooting.

He had also violently threatened two officers with an axe on November 6 after they cornered him in a Yuendumu home and attempted to arrest him.

The incident prompted Yuendumu police to call for support which came in the form of a four man Immediate Response Team from Alice Springs, which included Rolfe.

Det Kelly, who has been on force for 18 years, said his team was not initially alerted to the axe incident when they were tasked to arrest Mr Walker, which he found surprising.

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

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

The trial continues on Friday.