CCTV reveals final moments before Clare Nowland Tasering

Baker said she continued to encourage Nowland to drop the knife, but her “main answer was ‘no’.”

In a triple zero call at 4.08am, previously played to the court, the nurse reported a “very aggressive resident” had “two little knives” and was “raising them”.

The nurse told the court she received a call from the police who said officers were coming to assist ambulance staff because Nowland had a knife.

“I actually enquired, why them, not the ambulance? [Because] I said she was going to the hospital to be sedated,” she said.

Baker said she was told the police would be half an hour because they needed “to go to the office to get into their uniforms before they could come to the facility”.

“I thought, once you’re called, they are 24 hours. That wasn’t the case in the rural setting.”

She said Nowland “escaped from the back door” of the bedroom, and she found her in the administration building. She said Nowland raised an arm holding the knife, and she “backed off”.

“I was kind of concerned, not knowing whether she was going to really attack me or not,” she said. “With other experiences, I just thought, ‘Give her some time, she’ll calm down’.”

The nurse said she met with the ambulance staff and police, and they initially could not locate Nowland until she was discovered sitting in a treatment room, still holding one of the knives.

The jury has viewed body-worn police footage which captured White and others repeatedly asking Nowland to drop the knife, before White said, “Stop … nah, bugger it” and discharged his weapon.

Baker said she saw a male police officer take out “something that he had in his hand”, but she did not know what it was, and thought it was “just a torch”.

“When he held it and pointed … I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said. “I just saw two little lights. In my years of experience as a nurse, almost 50 years, I’ve never seen anything like that.”

She added: “I was very, very concerned when she was falling to the ground.”

Under cross-examination by White’s barrister Troy Edwards, SC, Baker accepted she had said in a police statement that “as soon as Clare started to fall, the police and the ambulance rushed in to try and stop her, but they didn’t get there in time”.

Nowland ‘unable to comply with instructions’

The court also viewed CCTV of two incidents involving Nowland in April 2023, which the prosecutor described as her becoming “stuck in a tree”, and ramming a carer with her walker while agitated.

The court has heard Nowland was not formally diagnosed with dementia. Geriatrician Susan Kurrle, who never met the 95-year-old but reviewed her medical records, believed she had the “behavioural version of frontotemporal dementia”, and it was “moderate to moderately severe”.

“She was still mobile, but she was certainly unable to necessarily understand what was happening to her and to comply with instructions,” she said.

Kurrle gave evidence Nowland’s behaviour changed “dramatically” in the three months before her death and she was prescribed anti-psychotic medication risperidone in late April 2023 to help her aggression.

The court heard Nowland was recorded as having “weak grip” and problems with dexterity. White’s barrister said hospital notes from April 28, 2023 recorded Nowland as punching, picking up her walker and throwing it, trying to bite, and pulling out an intravenous line.

“Would you accept, as a general proposition, those actions don’t seem consistent with weak grip or problems with dexterity?” Edwards asked.

Kurrle said if someone is anxious, distressed, afraid or angry, they can “get amazing strength”.

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She agreed with Edwards’ suggestion that people with dementia can have impulsivity, irrationality and disinhibition, and that these can “manifest themselves in unpredictability of behaviour”.

The Crown alleges White was criminally negligent or committed an unlawful and dangerous act. The defence argues White acted within his duty as a police officer.

The trial continues before Justice Ian Harrison.