Death of Kumanjayi Walker
Charles Arnold Walker, for cultural reasons known as Kumanjayi Walker since his death, was a Warlpiri man who was shot and killed by police while resisting arrest in the remote Aboriginal Australian community of Yuendumu, Northern Territory, in November 2019. Walker stabbed Constable Zachary Rolfe with a pair of scissors. Rolfe subsequently fatally shot him and was charged with murder three days later, but was acquitted in March 2022. Thousands of people rallied in Alice Springs in the days following the attempted arrest, and further protests followed in capital cities around Australia. After the acquittal of Rolfe a campaign entitled "Justice for Walker" has continued.
Kumanjayi Walker
Charles Arnold Walker, later known as Kumanjayi Walker, was born on 13 October 2000 in Alice Springs to a Luritja woman. His mother drank heavily during the pregnancy, and his family believed he had fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. She gave up Walker to the Alice Springs hospital when he was seven months old. He was then raised by one of his mother's friends, Leanne Oldfield, who was living with Walker's father, Frank, at the Warlpiri camp on the outskirts of Alice Springs. His home environment was marred by alcohol abuse and physical violence, and a constant struggle between various relatives for custody. He spent time in Adelaide and in a transient camp outside Katherine before moving to Yuendumu in 2010. By the age of 12, both of Walker's biological parents had died as had his step-father. He had minimal schooling, suffered from chronic ear infections, was difficult to control and spent some school days roaming for food and distractions.Walker had a history of breaking and entering, vandalism, theft and assault throughout his teens. He spent time in the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre and in the Alice Springs Youth Detention Centre where he was once restrained by a police dog. In 2015, at the age of 15, Walker began a relationship with a 14-year-old girl, who became a victim of his physical attacks in 2018. She had a domestic violence order out on Walker but regarded herself as his girlfriend on the day of his killing.
In November 2018, Walker faced court charged with two counts of assault. As a condition of his bail, he completed a rehabilitation program at the Central Australian Aboriginal Alcohol Programs Unit in Alice Springs and returned to live at the Warlpiri camp. Having complied with these conditions through to March 2019, he requested permission to visit Yuendumu for his “little sister”'s funeral, and this was granted by his Community Youth Justice Officer. However, he tampered with his electronic monitoring device and two days later, he broke into the town store with an accomplice, destroying equipment and stealing up to $7,000 worth of cigarettes.
Zachary Rolfe
Zachary Brian Rolfe was born in Canberra. In 2010 he enlisted in the Australian Army, serving in Afghanistan with the Townsville-based 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. After being discharged in 2015, he applied to a number of Australian police forces, and was accepted by the Northern Territory force, enrolling at the academy in Darwin in May 2016. Rolfe graduated as dux of his squad and was posted to Alice Springs in Central Australia – his first preference. In December 2016, during his first week with the NT Police, he rescued two tourists from flood waters near Alice Springs, for which he and a colleague were awarded the Bravery Medal in 2018. He joined the Alice Springs Immediate Response Team in November 2017.In 2018, a judge found that Rolfe had deliberately injured Malcolm Ryder, an Indigenous resident of Alice Springs, and then lied about it in court. Rolfe and five other officers had attended Ryder's residence with the intention to arrest Ryder's stepson. During the arrest, Ryder was injured and charged with hindering police. Police alleged that Ryder threw a phone at them, resisted and interfered with them. Ryder denied this, and alleged that Rolfe had slammed his face into the ground, leaving him unconscious in a pool of blood. At Ryder's trial, the judge dismissed the charges against him, and found that the evidence supported Ryder's version of events being more likely and that Rolfe had lied. NT Police considered referring Rolfe to the Director of Public Prosecutions for perjury charges over the Ryder incident, but decided against it.
On 4 April 2023, Zachary Rolfe was dismissed from the Northern Territory Police Force due to "serious breaches of discipline during their police career". The dismissal was related to a statement published online, that has been attributed to him. Rolfe intends to appeal the validity and legality of the decision. The coronial inquest into the death of Walker was ongoing at the time of dismissal.
Shooting
Suspended sentence and first arrest attempt
In June 2019, Walker was sentenced to 16 months' jail for the November 2018 break-in. However, the judge backdated and partly suspended the sentence so that Walker could attend a rehabilitation program at CAAAPU. Eight days after transferring from prison to CAAAPU on 29 October, Walker cut off his monitoring device and absconded, heading back to Yuendumu once again. Since Walker had violated the terms of his suspended sentence, a warrant was issued for his arrest, and his girlfriend was warned. Acting on a tip-off, two Yuendumu constables Christopher Hand and Lanyon Smith confronted Walker at his girlfriend's grandparents house in Yuendumu on Wednesday 6 November. Walker lunged at the officers with a small axe or tomahawk; the police retreated and Walker ran off into the scrub, dropping the axe on the front porch.Hand told the grandmother "he's lucky we didn't shoot him" and later told detectives that he froze and was frightened that Walker would assault him with the axe. Smith gave evidence in the Supreme Court that he "didn’t feel that he was going to hurt me" and that he saw the use of the axe as "more of an intimidation to get out of the room... a show to his partner... he just wanted to get away". Sergeant Julie Frost, the officer in charge of the Yuendumu station, spoke to the grandparents later that day, telling them also that Walker could have been shot. Frost told them that Walker had two hours to hand himself in at the station. The grandfather told Walker to hand himself and he nodded in response. After Walker hadn't handed himself in and police hadn't heard from the grandparents, on the Thursday morning, Frost after learning that a funeral was to be held for Walker's grandfather, told the grandparents that he could hand himself in after the funeral. The grandfather agreed to contact an Aboriginal community police officer who would contact police after the funeral.
Although Walker was a violent offender, the failed arrest was the first time he had threatened violence against police. The task of arresting him passed from officers based in Yuendumu to the Alice Springs-based Immediate Response Team. This team, which included Rolfe, arrived in the town on the evening of Saturday 9 November. The Supreme Court later heard that the IRT members were aware of the axe incident, and had viewed the body-worn camera footage from the failed arrest attempt.
Medical staff evacuated
On 6 November, unidentified offenders ransacked the home of the manager of Yuendumu's medical clinic. The following day, the windscreen of her car was smashed, and on Friday she and her husband drove to Alice Springs, away, to have it fixed. Later that day, someone tried to break into the house again, as well as the home of a colleague at the clinic. That night, the homes and vehicles of two other nurses and a midwife were attacked with shovels, pickaxes and other weapons. There had been similar incidents in the preceding months, and, fearing for the nurses' safety, health department officials decided to evacuate all medical staff and their families on the morning of 9 November.Second arrest attempt and shooting
The shooting took place on the evening of 9 November 2019. Many people had come to Yuendumu that day for the funeral of Walker's grandfather, which had taken place in the afternoon. Frost had planned to arrest Walker with the aid of the IRT members and a dog handler on the following morning if he didn't show that evening as arranged.The four IRT members deployed to Yuendumu constables Zachary Rolfe, James Kirstenfeldt, Adam Eberl and senior constable Anthony Hawkings had all arrived by 7pm on 9 November. The dog handler senior constable Adam Donaldson had earlier arrived. Whether the officers were fully aware of Frost's plan, authorised by superiors, to arrest Walker the following morning, is disputed. That night the officers were to conduct high-visibility patrols through the town and respond to any calls for police assistance, and if they inadvertently came across Walker, they were to arrest him.
Rolfe and the other IRT members accompanied by Donaldson left the station just after 7pm and attended at his girlfriend's grandparents house and shortly after arrived at his grandmother's house. The officers hadn't planned, if Walker was armed, how they would arrest him. Walker at this time was at his grandmother's house with his foster-mother Leanne Oldfield. In addition to Walker and Oldfield, other people present at the home included Oldfield's partner and a young woman with a baby and a toddler. The officers were armed with Glock pistols, tasers, Hawkings was also armed with an AR-15 rifle and Kirstenfeldt had brought a shotgun for bean bag rounds but had left it in the car.
Rolfe and Eberl entered the house, found Walker at 7:21 pm and attempted to arrest him. Hawkings was at the side of the house with his rifle. Meanwhile, Kirstenfeldt was speaking to a neighbour and Donaldson was in his car. A struggle ensued during which Walker produced a pair of surgical scissors and stabbed Rolfe in the shoulder. Eberl immediately punched Walker in the head, quickly followed by Rolfe striking him in the face. Rolfe then shot Walker in the back with his Glock, which caused Walker to fall on a mattress with Eberl on top of him. Then, 2.6 seconds later, Rolfe leant over to where Walker was lying and fired twice more into the side of Walker's torso.
According to court documents, the assumed facts include the following: