Former officer Beau Lamarre-Condon has alleged he heard homophobic abuse and was bullied when working for New South Wales police, as the ۳۱-year-old gave evidence in his double murder trial.
Lamarre-Condon is accused of fatally shooting couple Jesse Baird and Luke Davies with his police service weapon in Baird’s Paddington home on ۱۹ February ۲۰۲۴.
He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter.
Lamarre-Condon on Thursday started giving evidence at the NSW supreme court in front of a ۱۵-person jury. He was the first witness for the defence.
Wearing a light grey suit, a dark coloured tie and a white collared shirt, Lamarre-Condon vowed to tell the truth.
He accused a former supervisor of making homophobic remarks while he was working as an openly gay police officer.
“He would say things such as ‘I used to bash gay people while in Jindabyne’,” Lamarre-Condon told the court on Thursday.
On one occasion, when responding to a domestic violence report, the supervisor allegedly said “Let’s go get these fucking faggots”, the jury was told.
Lamarre-Condon told the jury on another occassion, a coworker shot himself in the head. He recalled in court the last conversation the pair had.
“I said ‘How are you’ and he told me he was good. Nothing appeared out of normal to me, nothing about his behaviour suggested what he was about to do,” Lamarre-Condon told the court.
“[He later] went to his desk, took out his gun whilst off duty and shot himself in the head at work.”
Lamarre-Condon’s coworkers found their deceased colleague, the court was told.
The accused responded to questions about confronting situations he had encountered while working as a police officer. He told the court he could remember ۱۲ to ۱۵ incidents graphically.
Lamarre-Condon said he had “seen people that have jumped in front of trains, I have seen multiple hangings”.
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“Daily bullying” led Lamarre-Condon to transfer to the police youth command division to “escape” officers “tormenting” him at Surry Hills police station, he told the jury.
Asked about his relationship with Baird, Lamarre-Condon told the jury: “For the months of October and November ۲۰۲۲ it was friends with a sexual relationship. When we would meet up it was of the sexual nature. By December ۲۰۲۲, that’s when we began going on romantic dates.”
Prosecution lawyers wrapped up their case earlier on Thursday morning. They called more than ۵۰ witnesses, played hours of CCTV footage and shared pages of social media messages over the first seven weeks of the trial.
Lamarre-Condon’s defence team has previously claimed Baird and Davies were accidentally shot in two separate struggles with the accused when he was acting in “self-defence”.
The officer cleaned up the scene and disposed of the bodies afterwards because he “panicked considerably”, the defence lawyer John Stratton SC previously said.
The trial before Justice Natalie Adams continues.
