Police officers not guilty after tasering and pepper-spraying one-legged man, 92

Daily Mirror

28-05-2025

Two police officers have been found not guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm after tasering and pepper-spraying a 92-year-old man.
Donald Burgess was also hit with a baton and died in hospital 22 days after the incident at a care home. Prosecutor Paul Jarvis KC told the trial that the two officers were not responsible for his Covid death at 93.
PCs Stephen Smith and Rachel Comotto had denied assault and using unjustified and unlawful force on the OAP. Staff at the home called police when they saw Mr Burgess, who had one leg and used a wheelchair, poking a care worker with a butter-type knife.
Mr Jarvis said when the officers arrived at the care home, Mr Burgess was in his wheelchair holding the small cutlery knife. Smith, 51, told him: "Put the knife down or you will be sprayed or tasered."
He pepper-sprayed Mr Burgess, drew his baton and struck him, Southwark crown court heard. Comotto, 35, was then said to have deployed her Taser.
Mr Jarvis said: "It ought to have been obvious this was a man who wasn't going to be mobile. This was an elderly, vulnerable man who may not have understood what was going on. Rather than being met with understanding and sympathy, he was confronted by irritation and annoyance on the part of the defendants."
Mr Burgess had been a resident at the home in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, since 2018. He was taken to hospital after the incident. Three weeks later, he died having caught Covid. Mr Jarvis told the jury: "These defendants are not responsible for his death."
But he added: "The force used was unnecessary and excessive in the circumstances. The defendants assaulted Mr Burgess." Mr Jarvis told jurors during his closing speech on Tuesday that the officers had failed to gather information about the situation before entering his room and had simply sought to resolve it "as quickly as possible".
He said: "Nothing that happened in Donald Burgess's room that day was inevitable. It didn't have to happen that way. It was not forewritten that the officers had to use the force that they did. Neither was it inevitable that because one type of force was used and didn't succeed, there had to be another, and another."
He added: "Time, we suggest, was not against the defendants in this case - it was very much in their favour, but the approach which they chose to take was use force first and ask questions later.
Mr Smith denies two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm for his use of Pava spray and for using a baton, while Ms Comotto denies one count related to her use of Taser on Burgess.
Ms Comotto said she believed using the Taser was the safest way to "protect" Burgess. "I honestly believed the Taser was necessary," she previously told the jury. "It was proportionate because other tactics had failed. If I didn't act, something worse could happen."
Mr Smith previously told jurors he did not see that Burgess was disabled and using a wheelchair as he was focused on the knife the pensioner was holding in his hand. He claimed he only realised Burgess was an amputee after the incident, when the 92-year-old was wheeled out of the room.