A 47-year-old woman has died after being tasered by police in New South Wales in the second deadly incident so far this year involving the weapon in Australia.
NSW Police allege the woman threatened a member of the public and then police officers with an ax before “barricading herself” in an apartment just after midday local time Thursday.
Specialist negotiators were called to the scene in Stockton, in the city of Newcastle, before officers entered the apartment some nine hours later, police said.
Speaking on Friday, NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Peter McKenna said tactical police units shot the woman with a bean-bag round, injuring her shoulder.
The woman was then shot with a taser before being arrested and walked to an ambulance, McKenna said. She later died in hospital.
“The post-mortem on the woman will take place in the next couple days when we will be able to ascertain the cause of death,” McKenna said.
It is the second death this year involving a NSW Police taser, just months after a police senior constable was charged with multiple offenses for firing the immobilizing weapon at a 95-year-old woman.
Clare Nowland, a great-grandmother with dementia, died in May one week after being tasered by senior constable Kristian White.
Police were called to Nowland’s care home in the town of Cooma in the early hours of the morning following reports of a resident with a knife.
The police later said Nowland was holding a walking frame and a steak knife with a serrated edge that she had obtained from the kitchen area of the nursing home.
When she refused to drop the knife, it’s alleged White deployed his taser, causing Nowland to fall to the ground and hit her head.
NSW police guidelines say that tasers should be used on elderly or disabled people only in “exceptional circumstances.”
White is being tried on charges of recklessly causing grievous bodily harm, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and common assault.