SYDNEY (AFP) – Australian police will not release bodycam footage of an officer tasering a 95-year-old great-grandmother with dementia inside her nursing home, a state police chief said yesterday.
The woman, Clare Nowland, is in a critical state in hospital, three days after being shot with an electronic stun gun in a confrontation that shocked Australians and made international headlines.
Officers arrived at Yallambee Lodge in southern New South Wales on Wednesday after being alerted by nursing home staff that a woman was “armed with a knife”, police said.
Police said they urged Nowland to drop the serrated steak knife before she moved toward them “at a slow pace” with the aid of a walking frame, prompting one officer to fire his taser at her. Asked about political calls for police body-worn video of the tasering to be released, New South Wales police commissioner Karen Webb said: “I am not sure why they want to see it.”
The state police chief said she had only heard the audio from the recording – “I don’t see it necessary that I actually view it,” she told a news conference.
