It all happened last Wednesday before mid-afternoon. Workers at a nursing home in New South Wales, a large southeastern Australian state, called police when one of their guests, 95-year-old Clare Nowland, was extremely upset and had picked up a kitchen knife. One of the agents who arrived at the scene, when the woman approached him slowly -with the knife in one hand and holding the walker with the other-, drew his Taser pistol and fired a discharge at the old woman, who fell unconscious, hitting herself head against the ground. Nowland suffered from dementia and weighed just 43 kilos.
The event quickly captured all the media attention, with public outrage included by the disproportionate action of the agent against such an old woman, who was a great-grandmother. The officer, Kristian White, 33, was immediately suspended from employment and pay.
Nowland was admitted to the hospital with a brain hemorrhage. A week later, after 7:00 p.m. this Wednesday, her death was confirmed. "The NSW community trusts their police force, this is one incident out of the more than two million calls for assistance we receive each year," Police Commissioner Karen Webb told a news conference after the news. .
"This has been traumatic for everyone in the police force, who do their job 24/7 to protect and care for the citizens of New South Wales," Webb continued, adding that he had yet to review footage of the Taser attack, taken from the police officer's body camera, to "get a clearer idea of what had happened" and to see if new charges needed to be filed.
Agent White now faces three counts: "Assault causing actual bodily harm, common assault, and reckless grievous bodily harm," the indictment reads. These crimes can carry a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison. White must appear before a local court on July 5.
"Two officers spoke to Nowland for several minutes, but when she did not drop the knife and approached them, one fired a Taser, knocking her to the ground. At the time she was shot, she was approaching police, but it is fair to say that at a slow pace. He had a knife in one hand, but also the walker," another police chief described after the event while attending to journalists.
Local media revealed that after Nowland collapsed to the ground, other officers who arrived to investigate what happened took off her pajamas to examine her and left her naked until the ambulance arrived. In the networks, many users denounce the brutality against an elderly woman with dementia.
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