Former NSW Police officers admit to bashing and pepper spraying naked, mentally ill woman in Sydney's west

Sky News AU

10-07-2025

Two former New South Wales police officers have pleaded guilty after repeatedly stomping on the head of a mentally ill woman and pepper straying her genitals, a court has heard.
Former senior constables Timothy Trautsch, 30, and Nathan Black, 28, faced Penrith District Court on Thursday after pleading guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm in company, possessing or using a prohibited weapon without a permit and common assault.
The pair were charged after they performed a welfare check on a 49-year-old woman, who is now deceased, in January 2023.
The court heard the woman was in a 'state of psychosis' and ran away from the officers while naked through the streets of Emu Plains in Sydney's west.
The woman reportedly grabbed Black's handcuffs which led the officers to deploy pepper spray on her body as she laid on the ground unarmed.
The incident was recorded on officers' body worn footage and CCTV from a nearby building.
The footage played in court showed the woman sitting on grass, swearing and threatening Black and Trautsch.
"If you touch me, you are f***ed and I mean f***ed. They're up there watching," the victim told the officers.
"You don't know about the aliens, do you?"
Video footage then showed the pair's violence escalating during an 18-minute assault against the woman.
She was pushed onto the road, kicked in the head twice, dragged, punched, sprayed six times with pepper spray, in the face and once on her back, which was grazed after falling onto the road.
"That can be done for no other purpose than the infliction of pain, to spray OC onto a lady's back who has been at various stages dragged or fallen onto the floor," crown prosecutor Nicholas Marney said.
Some of the pepper spray got onto her genitals, the court heard.
At one stage, the footage showed the woman defecating on the road with Black telling her to wash her 'dirty, stinky a**' while giving her baby wipes.
'Go on, wash your c***, wash your a**, go on wash it out,' Black said to the woman.
"What the f*** is going on here hey."
The two men discussed using a taser and long baton, while Trautsch was at one point seen laughing.
The officers chose violence instead of restraining the woman or just talking to her, Mr Marney said.
"It should never have got to that stage, they had an obligation," he told Judge Graham Turnbull.
There was no threat posed with the two men able to contain her by pushing her onto the road, he argued.
Mr Marney added the woman's attempt to grab the handcuffs did not justify her being kicked in the head.
In addition to the offences tied to the incident itself, Black was also charged with two counts of intentionally publishing protected information after sending snippets of the body-worn footage to another police officer.
In a Facebook Messenger exchange, he described how the pair had emptied two cans of pepper spray on the woman.
'Both OC cans emptied on her. Was f***ed,' he wrote.
'She was f**ked the whole body worn is so good shows her being f***ed.
'Nurses are lodging a complaint (senior officer) is investigating because we caved her, but she had a hold of the cuffs and we had no other options.'
Both officers no longer work for the NSW Police Force.
The pair will return to court for hearings on July 15.