Shocking bodycam footage has revealed the moment a policeman who was stabbed while trying to make an arrest shoots an Aboriginal teen dead. 

Kumanjayi (Arnold) Walker, 19, was gunned down in Yuendumu, 300km northwest of Alice Springs on November 9, 2019, after cutting off an ankle-monitoring bracelet and escaping from court-ordered drug and alcohol rehab days earlier.

The video shows Northern Territory Police Constable Zach Rolfe, 30, and his partner Adam Eberl question the teenager about his identity before Walker lunges at them both with a pair of scissors.

Three gunshots can then be heard 2.6 seconds apart as Rolfe, a former Afghanistan war veteran, calls out repeatedly ‘he’s stabbing me’. 

The constable, who fired the fatal shots, was initially cleared of any wrongdoing over the shooting but was later charged with murder upon review. 

The 30-year-old faced the NT Supreme Court this week and alongside a jury watched as the distressing bodycam footage was played several times over.

Rolfe has pleaded not guilty to one charge of murder and two lesser charges of manslaughter and engaging in a violent act causing death. 

On November 9, Rolfe and Eberl were tasked with apprehending the fugitive after being sent from Alice Springs.

Bodycam footage shows the two asking Walker his identity, suspecting it is him.

The teenager appears calm and gives the officers a false name ‘Vernon Dixon’ who respond by asking him to put his arms behind his back. 

Walker pauses slightly before suddenly leaping at them with the pair of scissors, stabbing Rolfe in the left shoulder and his partner in the armpit.

One shot can be heard in the chaos and then another two follow 2.6 seconds later as Walker and the other officer struggle on the ground.

‘He’s stabbing me!’ Rolfe can be heard saying before yelling ‘let go of the scissors’. 

With the hospital at least a three-hour drive away, Rolfe and his partner immediately tried to offer first aid, carrying him to the police vehicle before frantically trying to treat him on the floor of a police cell.

But their efforts are in vain and Walker eventually succumbs to the gunshot wounds that punctured his lung. 

Crown Prosecutor Phllip Strickland in Supreme Court this week said it was the second and third shot that constituted murder. 

‘Two-point-six seconds after he fired the first shot, the accused stood over Kumajayi Walker and fired into his left torso… when the accused fired the second and third shot, he intended to kill Kumanjayi Walker,’ Mr Strickland said.  

The constable’s lawyer David Edwardson said his client was carrying out his role as a policeman in good faith and was defending himself and his partner. 

‘Constable Rolfe did not have the luxury of considering tactical options frame by frame. He had been stabbed,’ Mr Edwardson told the jury.

‘His partner was locked in combat with an armed assailant, he could not press the pause button. He was taught, trained and drilled – an edged weapon equals a gun.’ 

The officer-in-charge of the Yuendumu police station in November 2019 told the court she drew up a plan to safely arrest Walker. 

Sergeant Julie Frost said her station suffered a ‘huge resource problem’ the night the teenager was killed, prompting her to call in the Alice Springs-based Immediate Response Team which Rolfe was part of.

Sergeant Frost said she asked the IRT to patrol break-in hotspots in the community as well as do some high-visibility policing. 

She planned to arrest the teenager herself at 5.30am the following day on November 10, with an officer who knew Walker personally. 

‘An early morning arrest like that is a far safer time to arrest people,’ she told the court. ‘We know that they will be sleeping, and it gives the element of surprise.’ 

However, when asked what to do if they encountered the fugitive during their patrol Frost told the IRT officers: ‘By all means, lock him up.’

Mr Walker, who had a 13-page long criminal record for offences including theft, assault, break and enter and attacking on police, was ordered by the courts to undergo treatment at the CAAAPU drug and alcohol facility.

But on October 29 he cut off his tracking device and jumped the fence.

A warrant was issued for his arrest on November 5 and the following day two officers tracked him down. They attempted to make an arrest but Walker threatened them with an axe and fled into the bush.

‘He was a skinny young man and these police officers were stronger than him,’ Walker’s grandmother Bess Price told Seven News Spotlight investigation special Life and Death.