A former Australian police officer has been spared jail over the taser death of a 95-year-old great-grandmother suffering from dementia.
The New South Wales Supreme Court on Friday handed a two-year community correction order to former senior constable Kristian James Samuel White about two years after the police launched an investigation into the woman’s death. He will be required to perform 425 hours of community service.
White, 35, was found guilty of manslaughter for tasering Clare Nowland at the Yallambee Lodge aged care facility in Cooma in the early hours of 17 May 2023. The great-grandmother, who used a walker, refused to put down the steak knife she was holding.
White reportedly said “nah, bugger it” before he discharged the taser at her, which led her to falling backwards and hitting her head. She died a week later in hospital.
The case prompted a high-level internal investigation by state police in New South Wales. It also provoked debate about how officers in the state use tasers, a device that incapacitates using electricity.
Following the sentencing, Nowland’s eldest child, Michael Nowland, called the decision a “slap on the wrist”. He said the sentencing was “obviously very disappointing for the family”.
“A slap on the wrist for someone that’s killed our mother – it’s very, very hard to sort of process that, so speaking out is very emotional,” he said, adding that “justice and fairness” was all the family wanted.
Justice Ian Harrison, while handing down the sentencing, said the incident “falls in the lower end of objective seriousness” for manslaughter. He added that time in prison would be a “disproportionate” sentence.
Mr Harrison called White’s actions an “error of judgment” and a “mistake that in hindsight is hard to comprehend”.
“He deployed his taser in response to what he perceived to be a threat that in my view never called for such a response. There were several ways he might have dealt with it differently,” he said. “Mr White clearly made the wrong choice.”
“The simple but tragic fact would seem to me to be that Mr White completely, and on one available view inexplicably, misread and misunderstood the dynamics of the situation that he faced and patently overestimated the existence and the level of the threat created by Mrs Nowland in the circumstances,” he said.
White, in a letter of apology to the court and the victim’s family, said he took full responsibility and was willing to accept the consequences for his actions.
“I understand that my actions were adjudged to be wrong and have caused great harm, not only to Mrs Nowland, but also the emotional pain it caused to others, and for that, I am truly sorry,” he wrote, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
“I felt and still feel horrible about what happened,” he said, adding that he understood it would bring little comfort to Nowland’s relatives.
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