Outcry as Australian police taser 95-year-old care home resident

An aged pistillate with dementia is critically sick aft allegedly being tasered doubly by constabulary successful an incidental astatine a attraction home.

Officers were called to Yallambee Lodge successful Cooma aft reports that 95-year-old Clare Nowland was carrying a knife.

The incidental has sparked outcry, implicit what advocates accidental was a disproportionate response.

The New South Wales (NSW) constabulary main has said she shares assemblage concerns, and an probe is nether way.

Ms Nowland was tasered successful the thorax and backmost astir 04:00 section clip connected Wednesday, household person Andrew Thaler told the BBC.

She is being treated successful infirmary having suffered a fractured skull and encephalon bleed, aft falling during the incident, helium said.

Her household are already grieving arsenic they bash not expect her to survive, helium added.

"The household are shocked, they're confused... and the assemblage is outraged."

"How tin this happen? How bash you explicate this level of force? It's absurd."

NSW Police has launched a captious incidental investigation, and commissioner Karen Webb has said her thoughts are with the woman's family.

"I recognize and stock the assemblage concerns and guarantee you that we are treating this substance with the utmost seriousness," she said.

Community groups, including the NSW Council for Civil Liberties and People with Disability Australia (PwD), person criticised the constabulary response.

"She's either 1 hellhole of an agile, fit, accelerated and intimidating 95-year-old woman, oregon there's a precise mediocre deficiency of judgement [from] those constabulary officers," PwD President Nicole Lee told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"She needed idiosyncratic to de-escalate the concern with her and to speech to her, and to grip her with compassion and clip and not tasers."

The attraction home, which is tally by the Snowy Monaro Regional Council, opened successful 1995 and looks aft residents with "higher needs", according to its website.

The council's main operating serviceman Jeff Morgan told section media that unit followed procedures and did what was needed successful the circumstances.