A police officer has broken down in tears and said she tried to fire a taser before the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Sydney woman Courtney Topic outside a Hungry Jack’s restaurant in 2015.
Probationary constable Angela Tyson was one of three officers first on the scene after witnesses made emergency calls about a young woman wandering around the Hoxton Park area with a large kitchen knife on the morning of February 10, 2015.
Tyson told the NSW Coroner’s Court on Friday that after asking Topic to put down the knife multiple times, she drew her taser and attempted to fire — but the defective weapon did “nothing”.
Seconds later, Topic was shot dead by constable Ethan Tesoriero.
The 22-year-old's death is the subject of a coronial inquest that started on Monday and is expected to run for seven days.
On Friday afternoon, Tyson told the court she had asked Topic to “Put the knife down for me”, and “Put the knife on the ground”, multiple times, but it elicited no response from the 22-year-old.
Asked by junior counsel assisting the coroner Jake Harris if she considered adopting a different approach – such as using different words – Tyson said "No, I needed her to put the knife down".
The inquest heard earlier this week that Topic may have been suffering from undiagnosed schizophrenia and in a psychotic state at the time of the shooting.
Tyson, who had been a police officer for four and a half months at the time of the shooting, told the court she tried to fire the taser when Topic took steps towards her, but it didn’t work.
“I called out loud ‘The taser’s not working, the taser’s not working’,” she said. “That’s when I heard [Teseriero] start to speak. He was telling her to put down the knife as well.”
She said Teseriero was speaking in a “loud, stern voice” and was “yelling but not screaming, if there’s a difference”.
Topic turned her attention to Teseriero, and then senior constable Darren Jones used capsicum spray on her, Tyson said. After that, she started to move “very quickly” towards Teseriero.
“She just kept running towards him," Tyson said, adding the knife was "out in front".
“At the end she just seemed like she intended to keep running towards him. She was determined. She was getting very close to him. And that’s when he fired. She went one or two steps and then she fell to the ground.”
Tyson began to cry in the witness box, and Topic’s mother and grandmother also wept in the public gallery. Magistrate Liz Ryan ordered a short break.
Tyson defended her actions in the shooting under questioning from the lawyer representing the Topic family, Sophia Beckett.
She acknowledged that a video filmed on the taser's camera did not show her saying that the taser was defective, nor did it show Topic stepping towards her. She said those things had happened, but suggested it may have been while the video was not filming.
"I don't know, the taser wasn't working properly so I don't know what happened with the camera," she said.
She also said it was possible she was mistaken about the sequence of events that had taken place, in terms of when she had attempted to fire the taser.
Tyson said she felt her actions in drawing and attempting to fire the taser at Topic were “totally justified”, and that she had perceived a direct threat to her safety and the safety of her fellow officers.
Tyson said “that’s not what we do” when asked if she and Teseriero had discussed waiting for other officers to arrive before approaching Topic.
“As the first car on the scene we need to deal with the situation," she said. "We can’t wait.”
She said she had considered a number of factors in approaching Topic, including people she saw in the Hungry Jack's carpark and the prospect that Topic may run into traffic.
Tyson said she had attempted to communicate with Topic by asking her to put down the knife.
“With a raised voice and a taser pointed in her direction?" Beckett asked.
Tyson answered that she had raised her voice because of the cars at the large intersection by the Hungry Jack's.
"It was very noisy and she wouldn’t have heard me," she said. "I needed to raise my voice."
She said "de-escalation" tactics could not have been put into play "in this particular incident", and said she would not tackle the situation differently with the benefit of hindsight.
The inquest continues.