An expert witness has told Constable Zachary Rolfe’s murder trial that the policeman’s second and third shots into an Aboriginal teenager were not reasonable.

March 1, 2022

A murder-accused policeman did not need to fire the shot that killed an Aboriginal teenager during a failed outback arrest, an expert witness has told a Darwin jury.

Detective Senior Sergeant Andrew Barram says Kumanjayi Walker, 19, was pinned down by another police officer and the scissors in his hand were a “very low threat”.

Constable Zachary Rolfe, 30, has pleaded not guilty to murdering the teen as he resisted arrest at his grandmother’s home on November 9, 2019.

Rolfe fired three shots into Mr Walker after the teen stabbed him in the shoulder in Yuendumu, 290km northwest of Alice Springs. The second fatal shot ripped through his spleen, lung, liver and a kidney.

Expert witness Det Sen Sgt Barram reviewed Rolfe’s body-worn camera video of the incident and says the second and third shots were not reasonable or necessary.

Rolfe fired them after Mr Walker had fallen to the ground with another officer, Sergeant Adam Eberl, who was then a constable, on top of him.

“Things had changed substantially from when the first shot was fired,” Det Sen Sgt Barram told the Northern Territory Supreme Court on Tuesday.

“They had gone from standing in a fairly equal fight … to Mr Walker being shot in the back, which would affect a person in some way, and being pinned on the ground with his right arm under him.

“His ability to deploy that knife (sic) being limited by his lack of mobility.”

The former officer-in-charge of the NT Police operational safety section also said shots two and three made no difference to the arrest attempt or the “tactical situation” when Mr Walker “fought” being placed in handcuffs.

“They, in my opinion, were unnecessary and it does not appear a correct assessment of the situation was made by Mr Rolfe,” he said.

“The scissors were a very low threat at that point. We are taught to be accountable for every shot we fire and the need to assess and reassess after every shot. I believe there were other options available.”

But he said the first shot was justified because Rolfe was “confronted at close range with an edged weapon and actually stabbed with it in the shoulder”.

“It would have been reasonable to believe his partner was also in danger at that point.”

Rolfe and three other officers were sent to the remote Indigenous community to assist local officers with general policing duties.

They were also ordered to arrest Mr Walker at 5.30am on November 10 when he was likely to be sleeping and easily taken into custody.

Instead, they found the teen about 15 minutes after leaving the local police station where the officer-in-charge Sergeant Julie Frost has said she handed the men a printed page outlining the arrest plan.

Rolfe walked into a dark room and shot Mr Walker about a minute later after the teen had lied about his name and fought against being placed under arrest.

The Crown says Rolfe and his team were “intent” on finding Mr Walker after watching a video of him violently threatening two other policemen with an axe on November 6.

It has conceded the first shot, which was fired while Mr Walker was standing and wrestling with Sgt Eberl, was justified.

But it says the second and third shots, which are the subject of the murder charge, went “too far”.

Det Sen Sgt Barram agreed with Rolfe’s lawyer David Edwardson QC that Mr Walker’s scissors could have fatally injured the constable and the teen “had the capacity to be violent”.

He also agreed the body-worn camera footage had limitations when analysing the shooting and that he could not see Mr Walker’s right arm for much of the video.

The court also heard Det Sen Sgt Barram shared a graphic video to Facebook about a month before Mr Walker was shot of a US police officer being attacked by an offender armed with a knife and another officer shooting the man.

The video’s text read: “Why officers shoot until the threat has stopped”.

Det Sen Sgt Barram remains a serving member of the NT police force and the acting-superintendent of the drug and organised crime division.

The trial continues on Wednesday.