Man, 92, vowed to murder care home staff before being tasered, trial hears

A 92-year-old disabled man threatened to murder care home workers before he was allegedly assaulted by police, a court has heard.

Donald Burgess, a single-leg amputee and wheelchair user, told staff he wanted to stab them and would “take a great deal of pleasure” from it, prompting a 999 call to police.

Body-worn footage later captured Mr Burgess being sprayed in the face with synthetic pepper spray, struck with a baton and tasered within 83 seconds of two officers entering his room at Park Beck care home in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex.

Pc Stephen Smith and Pc Rachel Comotto are on trial at Southwark Crown Court charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Smith, 51, denies two counts of assault by using Pava spray and a baton. Comotto denies one charge of assault by discharging her Taser.

On Tuesday, jurors were played the emergency call made by deputy care home manager Donna Gardner in the lead-up to the alleged assault.

“He’s threatening to stab staff and has stated that he wants to murder and it will give him a great deal of pleasure,” she told the emergency operator.

“He still has the knife. I’m concerned if we leave him on his own he’s going to hurt himself.

“We’ve removed him from other residents but he’s not given in.”

She explained that the knife had a sharp, serrated edge and had been issued to help Mr Burgess cut his food independently – but warned it could still cause harm.

“Going back a few years we had a spell where he was threatening to hang himself, so I don’t want to take any chances with this gentleman,” she added.

Care home manager Steve Cooper said Burgess had been threatening staff for more than 30 minutes.

“He was very aggressive and threatening to hurt my members of staff,” he told the court.

“We tried to use different de-escalation techniques. He wasn’t responding to anything we said.

“I’ve tried to work this out ever since – I’ve never seen him like this before.

“He had a look in his eyes I’ve never seen before – he wasn’t the Donald I knew.”

He said Mr Burgess jabbed the knife towards him and told him: “I’m going to murder you, and I’ll enjoy it.”

Mr Cooper told jurors that in his witness statement he described Mr Burgess as looking “possessed”.

“I’ve never seen him look like that before – it looked like he was possessed,” he said in court.

“‘Possessed’ seems a bit dramatic, but that was the word I used at the time.”

Asked why he made the decision to call police, he said: “We tried all the other options.

“It was 35 minutes of trying to calm the situation down before I had to make that unfortunate decision.”

Jurors were told Smith had emptied an entire can of Pava spray into Mr Burgess’s face and struck him with a baton, before Comotto deployed her Taser.

Paul Jarvis KC, prosecuting, said the officers’ response was “unjustified and unlawful”, and argued that Mr Burgess did not pose an immediate threat.

Ms Gardner had acknowledged in her 999 call that his mobility was extremely limited.

“He is a wheelchair user so for him to approach the residents would be difficult for him,” she said.

“It’s unlikely he would approach another resident but it’s quite likely they could approach him without realising the danger.”

The trial continues.