Tangaru Noere Turia was shot and killed by police in February 2021. Photo / Supplied
A “501″ deportee ejected from Australia with mental health issues was killed in an unjustified shooting by a police officer who should have known he faced “low to negligible risk”, the Independent Police Conduct Authority has found.
Tangaru Noere Turia, 34, was killed in February 2021 after a standoff with police that ended when he left the house where he was staying with a close relative carrying a firearm.
The IPCA report released this morning said the officer who fired the fatal shot “was not justified in firing at and killing Mr Turia” and had made up his mind to shoot if he saw the mentally unwell man armed.
The IPCA report follows a police investigation into the shooting which saw no charges laid.
The IPCA said police could not exclude the possibility the officer who fired the shots was using “reasonable force” to defend himself or others - a likely defence were there to be a trial.
However, the IPCA said its oversight responsibilities required findings not on strict criminal liability - like police criminal investigations - but using a “balance of probabilities” to rule whether something was “more likely than not”.
The IPCA report described the scene that unfolded over two years ago in Papatoetoe after a 111 call at 5.45pm on February 25 2021.
That call came from a neighbour, identified in the report as Ms Z, who told police Turia had fired a shot through her living room window and that she had earlier seen him with a firearm.
The first police car was at the Papatoetoe street 10 minutes later, followed by senior officers who closed off access to the street and placed two officers close to the house where they could keep watch.
The IPCA report said that senior officer was aware Turia was facing current criminal charges which included allegations of firearms offending and judged neighbours, nearby workers and police officers at the cordons “at risk of grievous bodily harm or death” if the deportee decided to start shooting.
The level of risk led to a request for the Armed Offenders Squad which had members training nearby in their roles with the police’s Special Tactics Group, its elite firearms response unit. They arrived about 7.15pm led by a commander who had already been told Turia “has mental health issues and that is possibly compounded by drugs and alcohol”.
Once in the area, the AOS commander sent officers in to surround the house and sought out a way - by phone or loudhailer - to speak to Turia.
At 7.53pm, Turia’s close relative left the property and told police the armed man had been hearing voices recently. That relative told police he hadn’t spoken to Turia, explaining: “The reason I didn’t say anything was because I did not want him to mistake my voice for the ones in his head and turn on me.”
About that time, police began using a loud hailer in an attempt to make contact with Turia. Officers close to the house, who had watched Turia smoking at the window and loading ammunition into his firearm, saw he became “instantly became more agitated”.
Officer A, as the IPCA designated the officer who fired the fatal shots, would have heard Turia was “marching” around with the shotgun over his shoulder. When Turia left the house, the Eagle helicopter kept up the stream of intelligence by alerting officers Turia was “out the front door, out the front door”, the report said.
Turia was seen walking away from the front door and on to the driveway where Officer A saw the armed man, told him to put the shotgun down and - when he did not - shot him three times.
The IPCA found that the shooting happened about two seconds after Turia was visible to Officer A. “Although it is not clear from footage, it must have been within this time period that Officer A challenged Mr Turia to put his gun down, since he would not have issued the challenge until Mr Turia came into view. "
Turia was not killed instantly. Falling in the driveway, neighbours were so close they could hear him groaning. He died in hospital about two hours later.
IPCA interviews with Officer A showed the degree of awareness police had around Turia’s movements. The police officer said Turia had been quiet and “the whole time we’d had a running commentary from people what he was doing in the bedroom”.
“He’d loaded the firearm. He hadn’t tried to leave the address. He hadn’t made any attempts to talk to police.”
And then, when the appeal for Turia to come out began through the loud hailer, “he just started yelling, more or less saying: ‘What are you going to do? Come on,’ as if he was, like, wanting to fight”.
Officer A then described the moment he encountered Turia: “He had come from the front of the address and was slowly walking across the driveway towards a neighbouring address where the other team members were.
“I could clearly see he was holding a shotgun. He was holding the firearm in the low ready position as he walked and continued to yell out abuse and challenges… As soon as I challenged Turia he didn’t look directly at me, but I was in no doubt that he had heard me.
“Turia did not comply with my directions to drop the shotgun…He began to raise his shotgun up towards other AOS members and started to turn towards me as he raised the firearm. This all happened real fast.”
At that point, the officer said he believed Turia was about to fire the shotgun at police - including himself - and “there was immediate threat of death or grievous bodily harm”.
The IPCA report said there were clear signs Turia was unwell. “While he was indeed armed and agitated, and therefore dangerous, he presented as a mentally unwell man who for two hours vacillated between sitting on his bed, smoking, holding his firearm out the window, yelling abuse about Australians and showing generally unfocussed aggression.”
It said footage from CCTV cameras and the Eagle helicopter showed Turia when walked slowly towards the driveway he had lifted the shotgun and had the stock resting on his shoulder with the barrel pointing upwards and behind him.
While it wasn’t possible to see if his finger was on the trigger, “he did not begin to raise his firearm up towards other AOS members; it was already pointing upwards and behind him”.
The IPCA found “the CCTV and Eagle footage of Mr Turia walking out onto the driveway is in stark contrast to the circumstances as Officer A and others describe”.
It said it did not believe the officer thought the risk was as likely as he expressed in interviews with the IPCA and police. “Officer A had already decided to shoot Mr Turia if he emerged armed.”
While the IPCA considered the officer “genuinely thought that there was a possibility” Turia could shoot him or nearby officers, he also knew “Turia was not in a position to fire a shot immediately”. The report said the officer was also aware the chances of someone else being struck if Turia fired were “very low”.
The IPCA found it to be “an excessive and unreasonable use of force” in which Officer A “was not justified in using almost certain lethal force to avert a low to negligible risk”.
The IPCA said that the intelligence about Turia’s mental state meant it was “foreseeable that appealing to Mr Turia using a loudspeaker would escalate the situation”. It recommended that police consider whether they should consider someone’s mental health condition before turning to a loud hailer.
The IPCA report also found a lack of engagement by police with neighbours which saw people close to the final moments of the encounter between Turia and police. Eagle helicopter footage showed one neighbour standing outside at the moment Turia was shot. The IPCA found people should have at least been told to stay inside.
Assistant Commissioner Sam Hoyle said there was insufficient evidence to lay a charge against the officer and that an employment investigation would be unlikely to reach a different outcome.
He said the report showed the need for greater clarity in policy and training about thresholds for use of lethal force.
”Our staff respond to a wide range of fast-changing incidents in any given day. Many of these involve a very real risk to the public and can require split-second decision making.”
Hoyle said there would be a review of training and policy relating to the use of lethal force. He said there was a risk officer could feel unable to act if they thought their actions would be “too finely judged”.
He said the courts had also been “reluctant to apply too fine a judgement to decision-making” in cases where someone used force to defend themselves or someone else.
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