A Geelong man is suing Victoria Police after a probationary officer responding to a noise complaint shot him in the leg.
Andrew Wilczewski says the officer was trespassing in his Waurn Ponds backyard, having climbed a fence shortly before midnight on August 26, 2020.
Police initially claimed they’d spent 12 minutes knocking on the front door and windows of the home, before Constable Smith scaled the fence to the rear of the home where music was emanating from.
The 50-year-old DJ’s writ lodged in the Supreme Court notes that time frame was disproved by Leading Senior Constable Wylie’s body worn camera, that shows they’d been there for four minutes.
The writ states that claims by the junior officer she’d announced herself as a police officer while knocking on windows and doors in the backyard were also disproved by the camera footage.
Mr Wilczewski emerged from the back of his house holding a shovel, he says for the purposes of self-defence, before “Constable Smith saw the plaintiff, yelled, and simultaneously with this, fired her gun at the plaintiff,” hitting him in the femur.
The writ claims police then maliciously charged Mr Wilczewski with seven offences, including threats to assault police, assault police, reckless conduct endangering life, and assault of an emergency worker.
The charges were later dropped.
