Murder-accused policeman Zachary Rolfe says he was not handed an arrest plan for Kumanjayi Walker that senior officers had approved.

March 3, 2022

A murder-accused policeman who fatally shot an Aboriginal teenager during an outback arrest says there was no approved arrest plan.

Constable Zachary Rolfe, 30, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Jumanjayi 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 Northern Territory Supreme Court on Thursday has heard senior police ordered the constable and his team to arrest Mr Walker at 5.30am on November 10.

But the former soldier, who served in Afghanistan, says that was only “mentioned” as the “preferred” option by the local officer-in-charge Sergeant Julie Frost.

Rolfe also denied being handed the formal arrest plan that Sgt Frost has told the court she emailed and printed copies of.

The constable has told the court he first became aware of Mr Walker on November 7 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,” he said.

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

Two days later he 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.

But 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.

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 times. 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.