‘Brutal and barbaric’: Family mourn Taser victim as prosecutors push for cop to be jailed

“She laid there looking so desperately scared and pleading with her eyes,” Lloyd said.

She said her mother died in a “brutal way”, and she “could’ve just spoken to her and walked her back to her room” in the nursing home.

Jenny Jordan said her mother was “yelled at with a blinding light” in her face from the Taser, and the way her life was taken was “barbaric”.

Nowland’s relatives said she had been denied the right to a dignified and private passing, including her sister Annette Rabbitt, who said “she was an amazing woman who deserved dignity in dying”.

Dennis Nowland said his mother was “catastrophically let down” and her death was “totally avoidable”. He was deeply concerned someone trained and entrusted to serve the community could be “so incompetent and demonstrate such a severe lack of common sense”.

Gerard Nowland said White was a man “three or four times” their mother’s size, who had denied in his evidence at trial that the 95-year-old, who used a walking frame to move, was frail.

Grandson Scott Nowland said his heart broke at the thought the last thing his brave and fun Nana saw in her amazing life “was a police officer pointing a Taser at her, and the utter confusion she must’ve felt”.

“Her life ended abruptly and violently,” he said. “She deserved to go out on her own terms, not in this way.”

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Granddaughter Kym Lloyd, speaking directly to White, said: “Your actions were disgracefully unfair and unjust.”

Michael Nowland said: “I will never forgive this police officer for Tasering and killing my Mum.”

Prosecutors push for ‘full-time custody’

Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, said the video of the Tasering was “disturbing”, and submitted that a full-time custodial sentence was required given the seriousness of the offence and to recognise the effect on Nowland’s family and the community.

Hatfield said White had fired his Taser within three minutes of first sighting Nowland inside the nursing home, during which Nowland had “moved only about one metre to the doorway”.

“As can be seen on the video … the knife was only held up by Mrs Nowland when she was stationary, and she was not moving toward anyone at the time the Taser was deployed,” the prosecutor said.

Defence barrister Troy Edwards, SC, said White’s letter of apology was a heartfelt and truthful expression of how he feels, and he had told a psychiatrist he “struggles with the ‘fact that I did it’”.

He argued White made a mistake in the course of his duty, and “had an honest belief that what he did was necessary to meet the threat the deceased posed, but that was an error of judgment”.

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Edwards argued it would fall at the “very lowest end” of manslaughter offences, and it was for the judge to determine whether imprisonment was appropriate after considering all possible alternatives.

Justice Ian Harrison said the matter required considerable thought and reserved his decision on White’s sentence.

White was sacked from the NSW Police Force in December. He is seeking a review of the decision in the Industrial Relations Commission.

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