An Eagle helicopter was involved in the pursuit of Jerrim Toms. Photo / NZME
An Eagle helicopter was involved in the pursuit of Jerrim Toms. Photo / NZME
After Jerrim Marshall Toms was shot in the chest, he turned and ran, moving quickly across an Auckland highway before collapsing on the side of the road.
Advancing police officers followed, still pointing their guns at his fallen body.
Toms died in the early hours of March 31, 2018, on that highway after he was shot 12 times at the end of a high-speed police chase.
Footage from a police Eagle helicopter, shown at his inquest on Monday afternoon, showed the 29-year-old get out of his car and take confident strides towards a line of armed officers, two of them standing behind their open police car doors.
Both of Toms’ hands were down, one of them holding a machete.
The officer who fired the first shot told the inquest he believed Toms was going to kill or seriously hurt him.
“His silence and demeanour was saying, it’s either me or you,” said Officer A, whose identity is protected. “He had no expression on his face, just eyeballed me, and I eyeballed him,” he said.
Jerrim Toms was excited about life and looking forward to meet his daughter around the time he died. Photo / Facebook
He said Toms did not say a word, and did not respond when he was repeatedly asked to drop his machete, in a commanding way at first, then appealing.
“I was begging him to please stop, I don’t want to do this,” Officer A said.
He said he fired at least two shots at Toms’ chest, as police are trained to do. Asked to explain why, he said aiming at the “centre mass” was “usually enough to stop a person in his tracks, prevent continuing action, and it’s harder to miss”.
Asked why he continued firing another three shots when Toms turned and ran, he said he thought he had missed.
“I believed he was still a threat so I shot two more as he ran,” he said, saying it was the first time he had shot a person. “He was still running. It’s not in the movies as I found out.”
Officer A said he did not know Toms had mental health issues or that his mother had called for help earlier. “I didn’t even know his name,” he told the inquest.
He believed the police did the right thing that night. “Being the senior person I must make sure my partner gets to go home, and so do I. Toms had plenty of opportunity to put down that machete,” he said. “His actions dictated my response.”
Police shot Toms 12 times in total, two bullets entering his chest at close range and each one fatal on their own, Coroner Debra Bell said when opening the inquest on Monday.
Officer A fired five shots and another officer, B, fired seven.
Toms had a machete and threatened police officers with it over the course of a high-speed police chase where his car was spiked and stopped three times.
On the third stop, police opened fire at Toms, who died before emergency services arrived.
Phone records shown at the inquest today show Toms posted cryptic Facebook messages about love and “We are all one” hours before he was shot.
He also sent messages about demons and biblical characters Cain and Enoch to friends and family in the days before the incident.
The inquest heard the recording of his mother Joan’s 111 call telling police he was mentally unwell, agitated, and had told her to get out of her house at 1.30am in the morning.
“He said, ‘I don’t want the likes of you in my house,’” she told the operator in a call that ultimately led to the police operation.
CCTV footage taken at about 2.21am shows his white Subaru legacy driving into a petrol station.
Toms, dressed in a black T-shirt and shorts, got out of the car barefoot, filled the tank with erratic movements, and made threatening gestures in the direction of the station shop before leaving.
A representative of the Auckland DHB leadership told the inquest this morning he did not believe having a clinician attend Toms’ incident with police would have helped.
“Mental health clinicians are not first responders,” said Dr John Paul Jacques, referring to well-established ways in which police could call on them for assessments, usually in a custody unit or the hospital’s emergency department.
Jaques said police also had 24-hour phone access to mental health services.
“In a case where someone is armed and there is imminent risk, it’s simply not safe for a mental health clinician to be there,” he said.
Toms suffered from bipolar disorder and was discharged from an Auckland mental health unit less than a month before he was shot.
A medical professional who saw Toms about two weeks before his death told the inquest on Monday he seemed well and was “bright, honest, kind, and gentle man” who was excited about life and the impending birth of his daughter. She was born a few days after his death.
