Australian 95-year-old woman tasered by police dies

SYDNEY – A 95-year-old great-grandmother died on Wednesday, a week after

being tasered by an Australian police officer

inside her nursing home, the police said.

The woman, Ms Clare Nowland, “passed away peacefully in hospital just after 7pm this evening, surrounded by family and loved ones”, New South Wales state police said in a statement.

Australian media had said police tasered the woman, who had dementia, on May 17 at the care home in the town of Cooma, about 300km south-west of Sydney.

The authorities had been called in after staff found Ms Nowland outside her room holding a steak knife.

Two officers spoke to Ms Nowland for several minutes, and when she failed to drop the knife and approached them, one fired a taser, knocking her to the ground.

Since the incident,

she had been in critical condition

in hospital, fading in and out of consciousness, setting off public uproar over the incident.

The police said on May 19 that the officer who fired the taser is off-duty pending a “level 1 critical incident investigation”, a category the police reserve for exceptional cases where injuries lead to death or imminent death.

The homicide squad is involved. AFP, REUTERS