Clare Nowland’s children and grandchildren have shared their grief at the sentence hearing for the former police officer who caused the 95-year-old’s death.
Clare Nowland’s children and grandchildren have shared their grief at the sentence hearing for the former police officer who caused the 95-year-old’s death.
By Sarah McPhee
Updated February 7, 2025 — 4.21pmfirst published at 10.59am
Clare Nowland deserved a dignified death after 95 years as a matriarch and “community servant”, but was instead killed in a barbaric way by a police officer with a Taser and no common sense, her grieving family has told a court.
Former senior constable Kristian James Samuel White was found guilty in November of Nowland’s manslaughter. The 35-year-old Tasered the great-grandmother as she held a knife inside Cooma’s Yallambee Lodge nursing home in May 2023.
CCTV and body-worn vision of the encounter, which lasted two to three minutes, captured White saying “Stop, just, nah, bugger it” before he discharged his weapon. Nowland, who had undiagnosed dementia, fell and hit her head. She died in hospital seven days later.
Generations of Nowland’s family attended the NSW Supreme Court on Friday for White’s sentence hearing, reading victim impacts which honoured her decades of volunteer work and adventurous spirit, and described her death as incomprehensible and inhumane.
Nowland’s daughter Gemma Murphy said it was unfathomable that her helpless and defenceless mother, who had been a devoted “community servant”, had been met with “aggressive brutality”.
She said the footage of the Tasering had left a “grotesque image” that she cannot erase, and “the echoes of Kristian White’s words, ‘nah, bugger it’ and ‘got her’ will forever haunt me”.
“I want her legacy and narrative to be remembered as the remarkable woman she was,” Murphy said. “My Mum was so much more than the grandmother who was Tasered.”
Another of Nowland’s eight children, Lesley Lloyd, who rushed to Cooma Hospital after the incident, said she was told “Mum had been Tasered by a police officer” and that she would not survive.
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“She laid there looking so desperately scared and pleading with her eyes,” Lloyd said.
She said her mother died in a “brutal way”, and she “could’ve just spoken to her and walked her back to her room” in the nursing home.
Jenny Jordan said her mother was “yelled at with a blinding light” in her face from the Taser, and the way her life was taken was “barbaric”.
Nowland’s relatives said she had been denied the right to a dignified and private passing, including her sister Annette Rabbitt, who said “she was an amazing woman who deserved dignity in dying”.
Dennis Nowland said his mother was “catastrophically let down” and her death was “totally avoidable”. He was deeply concerned someone trained and entrusted to serve the community could be “so incompetent and demonstrate such a severe lack of common sense”.
Gerard Nowland said White was a man “three or four times” their mother’s size, who had denied in his evidence at trial that the 95-year-old, who used a walking frame to move, was frail.
Grandson Scott Nowland said his heart broke at the thought the last thing his brave and fun Nanna saw in her amazing life “was a police officer pointing a Taser at her, and the utter confusion she must have felt”.
“Her life ended abruptly and violently,” he said. “She deserved to go out on her own terms, not in this way.”
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Granddaughter Kym Lloyd, speaking directly to White, said: “Your actions were disgracefully unfair and unjust.”
Michael Nowland said: “I will never forgive this police officer for Tasering and killing my Mum.”
Prosecutors push for ‘full-time custody’
Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, said the video of the Tasering was “disturbing”, and submitted that a full-time custodial sentence was required given the seriousness of the offence and to recognise the effect on Nowland’s family and the community.
Hatfield said White had fired his Taser within three minutes of first sighting Nowland inside the nursing home, during which Nowland had “moved only about one metre to the doorway”.
“As can be seen on the video … the knife was only held up by Mrs Nowland when she was stationary, and she was not moving toward anyone at the time the Taser was deployed,” the prosecutor said.
Defence barrister Troy Edwards, SC, said White’s letter of apology was a heartfelt and truthful expression of how he feels, and he had told a psychiatrist he “struggles with the ‘fact that I did it’”.
He argued White made a mistake in the course of his duty, and “had an honest belief that what he did was necessary to meet the threat the deceased posed, but that was an error of judgment”.
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Edwards submitted it would fall at the “very lowest end” of manslaughter offences, and it was for the judge to determine whether imprisonment was appropriate after considering all possible alternatives.
Justice Ian Harrison said the matter required considerable thought and reserved his decision on White’s sentence.
White was sacked from the NSW Police Force in December. He is seeking a review of the decision in the Industrial Relations Commission.
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Sarah McPhee is a court reporter with The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via Twitter or email.
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