One of Zachary Rolfe’s police colleagues has been taken to task over his evidence to the constable’s trial for the alleged murder of Kumanjayi Walker.

February 16, 2022

One of Constable Zachary Rolfe’s fellow elite police team member’s evidence about the day Aboriginal teenager Kumanjayi Walker was allegedly murdered has been called into question.

Response team member Constable James Kirstenfeldt drove to Yuendumu, 290km northwest of Alice Springs, with Rolfe on November 9, 2019.

The officer-in-charge at the local police station, Sergeant Julie Frost, says she gave the pair and two other members of their team a printed arrest plan soon after they arrived in the community about 7pm.

It ordered the men to arrest the Mr Walker at 5.30am on November 10 when he was likely to be sleeping and more easily taken into custody.

Constable Kirstenfeldt on Tuesday denied being shown the plan, saying he did not recall to dozens of prosecutor Philip Strickland’s questions while giving evidence to the Northern Territory Supreme Court in Darwin.

He also said early morning arrest was only a suggestion and Sgt Frost told the team to “grab” Mr Walker if it “came across” him.

The men left the Yuendumu police station at 7.06pm and quickly located the 19-year-old inside a house about 7.20pm.

Rolfe fired his first shot just over a minute later as he and Constable Adam Eberl attempted to arrest him.

Mr Strickland on Wednesday took Const Kirstenfeldt to task over his evidence a day earlier, asking: “Your answers that you do not recall, do you think that will help Mr Rolfe?”

Rolfe’s lawyer David Edwardson QC objected to the question but Justice John Burns allowed it.

Const Kirstenfeldt answered: “No, it is because I do not recall”.

But he was forced to accept that he had been given and read Sgt Frost’s arrest plan after a video was played to the court of him telling investigators soon after the shooting that he had seen it.

He said he “skimmed” through it and “we formulated, like, our own arrest plan”.

Rolfe has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Walker.

He shot the teen three times during a scuffle after the teenager stabbed him in the shoulder with scissors.

Prosecutors concede the first shot, which was fired while Mr Walker was standing and resisting arrest, was justified.

But it says the fatal second and third shots when Mr Walker was laying on the ground went “too far”.

Mr Walker died at 8.36pm from injuries sustained by one of those two shots, which the Crown says were not legally justified because Mr Walker was “effectively restrained”.

The trial continues.