A police officer who used a 50,000-volt Taser on a 92-year-old wheelchair user living with dementia later responded to a social media post with a lightning emoji, which a misconduct hearing was told appeared to make light of the incident.
PC Rachel Comotto deployed the weapon against Donald Burgess, an amputee in a wheelchair, after he allegedly threatened care-home staff with a dinner knife and refused to put it down.
Body-worn camera footage shown to the disciplinary panel captured Mr Burgess crying out in pain as the Taser probes struck his chest and sent an electric shock through his body.
His health later worsened, prompting his transfer to hospital. He died three weeks afterwards following a cardiac arrest.
Hours after the confrontation at Park Beck Care Home in St Leonards-on-Sea, PC Comotto posted a lightning emoji while responding to a Facebook message.
The exchange began when a colleague commented on a separate officer’s Facebook page: “Happy birthday, the care home is getting closer and closer,” accompanied by a winking face and a laughing emoji.
PC Comotto replied: “We all know what happens in care homes,” followed by a lightning emoji.
The colleague responded: “I think you’ll be banned from going to any care homes in future. All he wanted to do was butter his bread,” adding two laughing emojis.
Sussex Police officers PC Stephen Smith and PC Rachel Comotto are facing a disciplinary hearing over the use of pepper spray and a Taser on an elderly man with dementia
Mr Burgess was handcuffed and taken to a police station before his health deteriorated; he died three weeks later after contracting Covid-19
Giving evidence to the police disciplinary panel, PC Comotto said she made the remark after colleagues at the station had turned her into the subject of a joke.
She said other officers had been “laughing and joking” at her because she had used the Taser on a vulnerable dementia patient at a care home.
During the misconduct hearing in Lewes, East Sussex, PC Comotto accepted that her Facebook comment “doesn’t look good” and apologised to Mr Burgess’s family.
However, she maintained that she had posted it after colleagues made her “the butt” of jokes about what had happened.
Her lawyer, Colin Banham, asked whether colleagues had been “ribbing” her and how widely the joke had circulated.
PC Comotto replied that the officers did not know the full details, but had been laughing at her expense, saying the comments had spread throughout the office.
Mr Banham then asked whether the jokes referred to the incident taking place in a care home.
PC Comotto answered: “There was no humour directed at Mr Burgess.”
She also denied that her Facebook response was intended to mock Mr Burgess or make fun of the incident itself.
She said: “It was a continuation of the joke I was the subject of, or the butt of. I am the target of the joke, not Mr Burgess.”
‘With hindsight and without context it doesn’t look good and I want to extend my apologies to the family.’
The incident happened in June 2022 after police received reports of an elderly man threatening staff with a knife.
PC Stephen Smith and PC Comotto arrived at the home at 1.15pm and confronted wheelchair-bound Mr Burgess, who had been isolated in his own room and was holding a dinner knife.
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PC Smith walked into the room first and told Mr Burgess he would be ‘sprayed or tasered’ if he failed to immediately drop a knife he was holding.
PC Smith allegedly sprayed Donald Burgess in the face when he refused to let go of a knife
PC Comotto allegedly used her Taser against Mr Burgess after he had been sprayed and hit with a baton
In body-worn footage taken from PC Smith’s camera, the officer says: ‘Do you want to put the knife down mate for me or you will be sprayed or tasered. It’s up to you. Do you want to put it down for me?
‘Put it on the floor Donald don’t be silly. Come on, don’t be silly. We can solve this without having to resort to this.’
Raising his voice he says: ‘Do as you’re told. Put it down. Put it down. Donald put it down. Seriously, put it down. Last chance. Put it down now. Drop the knife. Drop the knife!’
He then pepper sprays the pensioner in the face before repeating his demands for Mr Burgess to drop the knife.
When Mr Burgess fails to do so he screams at the pensioner and hits him with his police baton.
PC Comotto then shouts ‘Taser, Taser’ before discharging the weapon at the wheelchair-bound pensioner who screams in pain.
In the second video shown of PC Comotto’s body-worn footage, she tries to tend to the pensioner, who is struggling to breathe following the pepper spray.
She says: ‘Donald. How’re you feeling?’
‘I’m dying,’ replies the 92-year-old.
The video footage shows the officers handcuffing the pensioner and then wheeling him out of the care home to give him fresh air.
PC Comotto, 37, and her colleague PC Stephen Smith, 52, are appearing before a disciplinary hearing accused of using ‘excessive force’ amounting to gross misconduct.
Earlier, PC Comotto told the hearing she had discharged the Taser at Mr Burgess to prevent him being hit with a baton a second time.
She said that after the initial strike was unsuccessful, she saw PC Smith was about to deliver a second blow.
PC Comotto said in consideration of his age a second strike was going to be too much for Mr Burgess.
She said: ‘I believe it was safer to use a taser as a lower level of risk.
‘A baton strike is a high level of force and can be quite injurious.
‘For an older person to receive a strike from a baton it would have more impact than on a younger person.’
It is not alleged at the disciplinary hearing the officers’ actions continued to the subsequent death of Mr Burgess who died after contracting Covid-19 in hospital and suffering a cardiac arrest.
The hearing continues.