Beau Lamarre-Condon reenacts Jesse Baird shooting in court, Guardian reports

Beau Lamarre-Condon showed a Sydney court on Monday how he says he shot Jesse Baird, demonstrating from the witness box while being questioned by prosecutors in his trial over two alleged murders, The Guardian reported.

Lamarre-Condon, 31, formerly a senior constable with NSW Police, is accused of using his service weapon to kill Baird and Baird's partner, Luke Davies, at Baird's Sydney home in Paddington on Feb. 19, 2024. He has pleaded not guilty to the two murder charges, as well as a charge of aggravated break and enter.

His lawyers say he defended himself after two distinct struggles over the gun inside the house. Prosecutors allege Lamarre-Condon became obsessively infatuated with Baird, a television presenter, after the pair had a casual romance in 2023.

During Monday's cross-examination, Lamarre-Condon again said Baird had a knife during their struggle inside the house. He told the court he pushed Baird back with his right arm because the knife was beside his throat.

Lamarre-Condon has appeared in court wearing rosary beads wrapped around his hand, and has sometimes become emotional while testifying. Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC asked him to stand and act out what happened.

"Put your rosary beads down while you do that," Hatfield said. Describing the demonstration for the jury, he continued, "[The accused] with his left arm out at shoulder height, demonstrated pushing Jesse Baird’s right hand with the knife away from him, so that the left arm was fully extended," followed by "[Lamarre-Condon] gestured pulling the pistol around the area around his belt … then held it up at around chest or shoulder height and demonstrated with a bent elbow firing a shot towards the right shoulder of Jesse Baird."

"My arm did extend … I don’t know to what extent … there was constant movement in this struggle," Lamarre-Condon said. "That’s as clear as I can be. This happened very, very quick."

Lamarre-Condon said he "discharged a shot" while aiming toward Baird's right shoulder.

Hatfield recalled Lamarre-Condon's testimony the previous week that Baird pinned him, then asked if his account was now "something different." Lamarre-Condon said the pinning occurred immediately before he pushed back and fired, after constant movement.

He again said he had not intended to fire the second shot at Baird.

Testimony about the shots

"The first shot was intentional, the second wasn't," Lamarre-Condon told the jury last week, ABC News reported. He said he chose Baird's shoulder as his target because hitting the centre of his body would be fatal.

"That first shot into Jesse's shoulder was the right move," he said in the same testimony. He also told the court that week, "I'm responsible for his death but it wasn't intentional." The court heard that a gunshot struck Baird's head.

In that testimony, Lamarre-Condon said he had gone to the house without Baird's knowledge to retrieve belongings, including a surfboard and a $25,000 Cartier ring. He said he took a helmet and high-vis jacket from a food delivery driver, allowing him to approach the door without Baird recognising him. Lamarre-Condon testified that Baird did not recognise him and shouted "we're getting robbed."

Lamarre-Condon testified that Davies held the police pistol, threatened to shoot him and pulled the trigger during a struggle. "I didn't shoot Luke," he said.

The Crown alleges Lamarre-Condon deliberately tried to conceal his involvement in the deaths, and the trial heard seven weeks of evidence about his movements that week. Last week, he testified that he placed Baird's and Davies' bodies in surfboard bags and drove the bags to a farm in Bungonia, outside Sydney.

Lamarre-Condon surrendered at Bondi Police Station on Feb. 23, 2024, and subsequently helped detectives find the bodies, ABC News reported.

It was not immediately known how long cross-examination would continue.

The jury trial continues before Justice Natalie Adams in the NSW Supreme Court.