The NT policeman who led the TRG in a remote community after a constable shot an Indigenous teen dead has detailed the uneasy scene he found after the incident.

October 26, 2022

A constable shooting an Indigenous teenager dead was the “biggest thing” the Northern Territory Police Force had faced in almost two decades, an inquest has heard.

The commander of the territory’s elite tactical police unit has told the coroner he was surprised to see the Warlpiri man’s body on a police station floor.

Kumanjayi Walker, 19, died after Constable Zachary Rolfe shot him three times during a bungled arrest in Yuendumu, northwest of Alice Springs on November 9, 2019.

An Alice Springs inquest into his death heard on Wednesday that after the shooting the NT’s tactical response group was called to the remote community amid fears its police station could be overrun by rioters.

The unit’s tactical commander at the time, Sergeant Meacham King, told coroner Elisabeth Armitage the local police officers were in an “uneasy state” when his team arrived.

“When I saw (the officer in charge) Sergeant Frost you could see she was heavily affected by the situation,” the veteran policeman said.

“You could just see she was upset. You know when you look at someone and you can just see they’re not coping.

“I couldn’t get good clear communication from her … She was a bit all over the place.”

Sgt King also said the officer sent from Alice Springs to manage the police response to the shooting, Sergeant Terry Zhang, was struggling to come to grips with the task ahead of him.

“He was looking for some guidance … I encouraged him to take notes as he was little unsure how to do it and I said to him … ‘this is the biggest thing this organisation has seen in 17 years (since the last police shooting resulting in a death)’,” he said.

“There was nothing that gave me ‘oh good, I’ve got a guy who’s been exposed to some of this’. Straight away I knew he was underprepared probably from lack of experience.”

Sgt King warned that there would be high level scrutiny into the incident and how police responded to it.

He agreed with counsel assisting Patrick Coleridge that he expected to find a more experienced police officer in charge at Yuendumu.

“I was a little bit surprised with the seriousness of what we had why we hadn’t sent out someone more senior to control it,” he said.

Sgt King said he was also surprised to spot Mr Walker’s body laying on the floor in the police station.

“I didn’t think he was there. I was informed he was being taken to the clinic … I would have assumed he would have been taken back on the plane or would have been removed,” he said.

“As soon as I saw the body was there my next question was ‘do the family know that he’s here and do they know he’s deceased’ and they said ‘no and no’.”

Sgt King said he became fearful the situation could become more unsafe at the station if Mr Walker’s family learned his body was still in Yuendumu.

“If they knew he was there and they knew he was deceased they’d want to come and see him, and I knew we didn’t want to do that,” he said.

“If they were going to see him in the station they were going to get extremely emotional … When they get emotional aggression sometimes comes in.”

The inquest continues.