A 95-year-old woman in Australia is in a critical condition after she was tasered by police.
The woman, who has dementia, was holding a knife at a retirement home.
Police caled to the care home in Cooma, about 300 km southwest of Sydney, after staff found resident, Clare Nowland, outside her room holding a steak-knife, New South Wales police assistant commissioner Peter Cotter said.
Two officers spoke with Ms Nowland for several minutes but when she failed to drop the knife and approached them, one fired a taser, knocking her to the ground.
“At the time she was tasered, she was approaching police but it is fair to say at a slow pace,” Mr Cotter said during a press conference.
“She had a walking frame, but she had a knife.”
The incident has sparked a public uproar in Australia.
“The use of a taser when a kind word was all she needed … she was confused which is what happens with people who have dementia, she needed kind words and assistance and help,” Community advocate Andrew Thaler said.
“She didn’t need the force of the law.
“Clare is 95-years-old, she’s about 5ft 2 (1.57m) and weighs all of 43kg, she can’t walk on her own without walking assistance.
“As they (police) said she had a walking frame or a wheelie walker.
“She doesn’t get to see her family. She might not open her eyes again.
“She has had a great life, a great service to the community and her church, very fondly regarded by a lot of people and she has a big family, and that’s now been taken away from her … because of something that is so patently absurd, we want to know how did it happen. And we also want to make sure it does not happen again.”
Australian police have said the homicide squad has joined a high-profile investigation into the incident.
The officer who fired the taser was off duty pending a “level 1 critical incident investigation”, a category police reserve for exceptional cases where injuries lead to death or imminent death.
“If a threshold is met where it changes from being a departmental issue to being a criminal issue, we are certainly mature and transparent enough as an organisation to do what has to be done,” said Mr Cotter.
Body cameras recorded the encounter but it was not in the public interest to release the footage because of the investigation, he said.
