Beau Lamarre-Condon, a former police officer, presented his defence before a court in Sydney after being charged with the murder of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies. The incident occurred on 19 February 2024 in the Paddington area, and Lamarre-Condon denied intentionally committing the murders.
Jesse Baird, who was 26 years old at the time of the shooting, died after being allegedly shot by Lamarre-Condon with a service police weapon. The former officer claimed he did not "execute" the victim and was unaware of the large gunshot wound on Baird’s face. According to him, Baird was holding a knife during a struggle inside the house, and Lamarre-Condon ordered him to drop the knife before aiming his pistol at his shoulder in an attempt to disarm him.
During the confrontation, after firing the first shot, his finger remained on the trigger, and when both men fell, he allegedly accidentally fired a second shot. Lamarre-Condon believed the bullet had grazed Baird’s head, unaware that it had passed through his right temple. He then turned Baird onto his back in the recovery position and checked for signs of life, but due to the large amount of blood, he did not notice the fatal wound in the mouth. Although he knew Baird was not responding, he was not certain that he had died.
Lamarre-Condon called emergency services and attempted to check Baird’s pulse and encourage him to squeeze his hand. He had entered Baird’s house dressed as an UberEats driver, wearing a helmet and a reflective jacket, and did not remove the helmet because he was not performing resuscitation. He also explained that he could talk on the phone using the speaker while wearing the helmet.
At the time of the incident, Lamarre-Condon saw Luke Davies standing in front of Baird’s door with a firearm. Davies threatened him with the words: "I will kill you." A struggle ensued in which Lamarre-Condon grabbed Davies’ left hand while holding a phone in his other hand. He highlighted that he had trained for almost seven years to learn how to disarm people, and that police are trained to push weapons upwards during disarming. He noticed that Davies’ index finger was pulling the trigger towards him, but denied shooting through the bedroom door. He also stated that his ears were ringing from the first two shots, which prevented him from hearing the shots allegedly fired by Davies.
Lamarre-Condon demonstrated to the court how he fired the first shot at Baird, showing how the knife was close to Baird’s neck. He showed how he pushed Baird’s right hand holding the knife with his left hand and drew his pistol from his belt, firing a shot at Baird’s shoulder in an attempt to disarm him.
