Murder-accused policeman Zach Rolfe says a video of Aboriginal teenager Kumanjayi Walker violently threatening officers with an axe was “swept under the rug”.

March 3, 2022

A murder-accused policeman who fatally shot Kumanjayi Walker says a video of the Aboriginal teenager violently threatening officers with an axe should have been used to alert others.

Constable Zachary Rolfe, 30, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Walker, 19, who had stabbed him with a pair of scissors on November 9, 2019.

Rolfe fired three shots into Mr Walker’s back and torso as he resisted arrest at his grandmother’s home in Yuendumu, 290km northwest of Alice Springs.

The former soldier, who served in Afghanistan, said he first became aware of Mr Walker two days earlier in Alice Springs when the teenager was listed as an “active arrest target” for breaching parole and assaulting police.

“I characterised him as a high-risk offender, extremely violent, who was willing to use potentially lethal weapons against police,” Rolfe told the Northern Territory Supreme Court.

He said he viewed body-worn camera footage of the so-called “axe incident” which showed the two officers freezing in “an extremely, potentially deadly situation”.

He then alerted two senior officers to the danger Mr Walker potentially posed.

“From my reading of the initial job write-up, it seemed to me that this incident was being swept under the rug,” he said.

“This is the kind of incident that we should all be alerted to because Yuendumu is three hours from Alice Springs.

“This offender was, potentially, a risk to Alice Springs (police) members.”

Two days later Rolfe and three officers from the specialist Immediate Response Team were ordered to visit Yuendumu.

Rolfe said the superior officer told him twice that his “mission” in the remote community was to arrest Mr Walker.

Senior NT police officers have given evidence to the contrary, saying Rolfe’s team was ordered to assist local officers with general duties and carry out a highly visible patrol and gather intelligence about Mr Walker’s location.

The court has been told the approved plan was to arrest Mr Walker at 5.30am on November 10, when he was likely to be sleeping and could be easily taken into custody.

Rolfe and his team found Mr Walker 15 minutes after they left the Yuendumu police station the night before. Rolfe fired his first shot about a minute later while Mr Walker was standing and wrestling with Sergeant Adam Eberl.

Mr Walker died about an hour after Rolfe’s second shot ripped through his spleen, lung, liver and a kidney.

Evidence presented to court has included that Mr Walker was pinned to the ground by Sgt Eberl and was a “low threat” when Rolfe pulled the trigger the second and third time. The Crown says the shots were unjustified.

Other expert witnesses have said the duo should have never gone into the house and Rolfe had not acted as trained.

The trial continues on Thursday.