"It's all good. He had scissors": a brief linguistic analysis of the moment Kumanjayi Walker was shot

In late 2019, Zachary Rolfe entered a Yuendumu home and not long after, a teenager now known as Kumanjayi Walker had been shot three times and died soon after. 

The body-worn footage captured the moments of the shooting and what the two police officers, Rolfe and Eberl, said at the time. 

Pragmatics is a part of linguistics that lets you analyse the intentions of what people say. This definition works well:

Pragmatics is a field of linguistics concerned with what a speaker implies and a listener infers based on contributing factors like the situational context, the individuals’ mental states, the preceding dialogue, and other elements. (source)

However, it doesn't really require a linguistics degree to get insights into what was happening when Walker was shot, based on what the two officers said (as reported here).

Immediately after shooting Walker three times, Eberl, who was the officer in physical contact with Walker (rather than Rolfe who had shot Walker), said:

“Did you-? Fuck”.

It's apparent to anyone that for someone to say this, they need to be surprised. They are taking time to comprehend. The swear word used as an exclamation also indicates it’s a serious matter. 

Would Eberl have said this if he instead felt his safety or life was threatened by Walker? No. There would be relief or acknowledgement, perhaps regret. But not surprise and lack of comprehension.

Rolfe's words that come next are also telling:

“It’s all good, he had scissors in his hand, he was stabbing me, he was stabbing you”

 Firstly, "it's all good" is an utterance of reassurance. In direct response to Eberl's "fuck", it shows that Eberl had felt something bad had happened and Rolfe's immediate response was to reassure. However, it's worth noting the subject of the reassurance: it was Eberl and probably Rolfe himself. But not Walker. Walker had been (ultimately) fatally shot but Rolfe's reaction and concern was directed to Eberl, evidenced by the "it's all good". 

The other noteworthy part of what Rolfe said was: "he was stabbing me, he was stabbing you". The reality was (I believe) that Walker had attempted to stab Rolfe in the shoulder once. Firstly, Rolfe re-interprets this event as an iterative one (stabbing more than once, rather than a single event). Rolfe then projects an event onto Eberl's own experience ("he was stabbing you") which is an odd thing to do because Eberl had every reason to be as, if not more, aware of what he himself was experiencing than what Rolfe might believe Eberl was experiencing. 

So then the utterance "he was stabbing me, he was stabbing you" becomes a kind of verbal floundering, a seeking out of an interpretation of events that might add support to the "it's all good" reassurance. But the statement was inaccurate and included projections onto Eberl's own experience. So ultimately, it's not convincing as an interpretation of facts. It can really only be understood as representing a desire to explain and reassure. 

So basically what happened was shock/surprise/disbelief from Eberl, concern/reassurance from Rolfe towards only Eberl (and not the deceased) and then Rolfe's inaccurate verbal scan/search for justifications of his own actions.

To me, all of this indicates that in the moment of the shooting, then and there, Eberl and Rolfe knew it shouldn't have happened.

Rolfe was cleared of all charges related to his killing of Kumanjayi Walker on March 11, 2022.