An internal investigation is underway and a police officer is under scrutiny in Australia after authorities said he used a stun gun on a 95-year-old woman with dementia at a nursing home, critically injuring her.
The senior, Clare Nowland, remained hospitalized with life-threatening injuries Friday − two days after police said the officer shocked her with a Taser as she approached officers with a walking frame and a steak knife.
According to New South Wales Police Force, the incident took place Wednesday at Yallambee Lodge in Cooma, a town about 60 miles south of the national capital Canberra.
“I want to highlight personally on behalf of the organization, the care and empathy and the the sympathy we feel for the Nowland family,” Peter Cotter, the force’s assistant commissioner, said after he reviewed body camera video of the incident.
At a news briefing Friday, Cotter said the senior was approaching police “at a slow pace” when she was Tasered.
“She had a walking frame. But she had a knife. I can’t take it any further as to what was going through anyone’s mind when he used the Taser,” Cotter said.
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Woman suffered injuries from fall
Police said Nowland suffered injuries from striking her head on the floor, not directly from the Taser’s electric shock.
“The injury that she suffered as a result of hitting her head on the floor has rendered her bedridden at the moment,” Cotter said Friday. “She remains in and out of consciousness.”
Cotter told reporters Friday body camera footage would not be released and an investigation by the agency’s homicide division that began Wednesday remained underway.
A great-grandmother, Nowland was the subject of news stories in 2008 when she went skydiving on her 80th birthday.
How the incident unfolded
Officers responded to the nursing home at 4:15 a.m. Wednesday for a report of a patient with a knife, where Cotter said, the officers found Nowland in her room where she was armed with a knife.
“The knife in question was a steak knife with a serrated edge that she had obtained from the kitchen area of the nursing home a couple of hours earlier,” he said.
Two officers engaged in “negotiations” with Nowland for several minutes ordering her to drop the knife, but she did not drop it, Cotter said.
One of the officers “activated his Taser” when she approached the doorway where the officers were standing, and she immediately fell and hit her head, he said. Nowland was treated by paramedics on scene taken to a hospital.
Cotter said he could not elaborate on Nowland’s diagnosis. He said her family remained at her hospital bedside Friday and “there are significant concerns for her health and where that may lead.”
The assistant commissioner declined to say whether he thought a police officer used excessive force by firing a Taser at Nowland, who stands 5 feet, 2 inches tall and weighs 95 pounds.
Cotter also would not say whether the officer with 12 years of experience who discharged the weapon had been suspended, but said he was currently “not in the workplace.”
‘How was it appropriate to use this level of force?’
Nicole Lee, president of the advocacy group People with Disability Australia, said she was baffled by the police response, the Associated Press reported.
“She’s either one hell of an agile, fit, fast and intimidating 95-year-old woman, or there’s a very poor lack of judgment on those police officers and there really needs to be some accountability on their side,” Lee said.
Andrew Thaler, a family spokesperson for Nowland, said the senior’s dementia “waxes and wanes,” the The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
“The question will be, how was it appropriate to use this level of force on a 95-year-old woman?” Thaler told the outlet.
Contributing: The Associated Press
Natalie Neysa Alund covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@usatoday.com and follow her on Twitter @nataliealund.
