A Northern Territory policeman who shot dead an Indigenous teenager during a bungled outback arrest is set to give evidence at an inquest into the death.

November 16, 2022

An inquest into the shooting death of an Indigenous teenager is expected to hear evidence from the Northern Territory policeman who pulled the trigger.

But Constable Zachary Rolfe’s time in the witness box on Wednesday may be cut short due to a pending legal challenge about the questions he can be asked.

The officer shot Kumanjayi Walker three times during a botched arrest in Yuendumu, northwest of Alice Springs, on November 9, 2019 as the Walpiri man resisted being placed in handcuffs.

The 19-year-old’s community expressed outrage on Tuesday over Const Rolfe appearing as a witness at the Alice Springs inquest.

“It is so disgusting, so disgusting,” elder Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves told reporters.

“We as a community are thinking, how come he is still in a job? How come he’s still in the NT?” he said.

Const Rolfe was acquitted of Mr Walker’s murder in March after a five-week trial that left the Walpiri community calling for justice.

The ongoing inquest has heard Const Rolfe regularly used racist terms, such as c**n and n***** to describe Aboriginal people, and had been accused of excessive use of force in the months before he killed Mr Walker.

He also told his former fiancee he wanted to kill people and bragged in a text message about injuring a man during an arrest outside an Alice Springs pub.

The 31-year-old was also banned from applying to join the Queensland Police Force for a decade for failing to disclose violent behaviour on his job application.

He also failed to disclose that he had pleaded guilty to stealing while he was a soldier in the Australian Defence Force in 2012 when he applied to the NT Police Force.

NT police psychological testing revealed that Const Rolfe had above-normal aggression levels and was less likely to accept responsibility for mistakes than other people.

The coroner has also been given evidence about medication prescribed to Const Rolfe that may have impacted on his decision-making.

Psychiatrist Alexander McFarlane’s evidence is that the drug was “likely to have impacted on his capacity for behavioural inhibition to threat”.

The inquest continues on Wednesday. The Supreme Court is likely to hear legal argument about Const Rolfe’s evidence next week.