Beau Lamarre-Condon trial live updates: Former NSW Police officer’s cross-examination continues over alleged murders of Jesse Baird, Luke Davies

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of Beau Lamarre-Condon’s criminal trial in the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney.

Lamarre-Condon, 31, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder over the deaths of Jesse Baird, 26, a former TV presenter, and Luke Davies, 29, a Qantas flight attendant, in Paddington on February 19, 2024. His case is that he acted in self-defence, the 15-person jury has been told.

The former NSW police officer started giving evidence on Thursday and returns to the witness box at 10am today for cross-examination by Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC.

Here are the key parts of his evidence on Friday:

• Lamarre-Condon said he entered Baird’s Paddington share house through an open door on February 19, 2024, to collect some of his belongings – including a $25,000 Cartier ring and Casablanca shirts worth thousands – after their relationship ended in November 2023. He said he also had a key with him that Baird had cut for him in November.
• He said his relationship with Baird was romantic but was not exclusive. He believed nobody was home despite the door being ajar when he entered the home, he said.
• The accused had his police weapon with him because he had contemplated taking his own life on February 18 over work-related trauma and had intended to return it to Miranda police station later that day, he said.
• He said he struck upon an idea that morning to dress as an Uber Eats delivery rider and used a motorcycle helmet, high-visibility clothing and bags he saw on a bike in Paddington. “I was worried if I knocked on the door it may be perceived as harassment ... because Jesse told me, ‘please refrain from contacting me’,” Lamarre-Condon said.
• He entered the home after knocking three times and saying hello loudly and receiving no reply.
• He ran upstairs and hid when he heard noises in the home and came back downstairs later, encountering Baird in the kitchen. He said he took off the high-visibility jacket upstairs and his firearm was “secreted under my shirt. You could not see it. It was actually to the rear of me on a plain-clothes holster so no one could be under the impression that I had a firearm on me”.
• Baird did not recognise Lamarre-Condon with the helmet on and lunged at him with a knife, he said. He said at one stage the knife “tore my whole blue shirt open” and he was pinned to a wall in the kitchen.
• He shot Baird once in the shoulder to disarm him and accidentally in the head when they fell to the floor.
• “I 110 per cent stand by that first shot because if I didn’t do it Jesse Baird would be sitting here in the box today, and he would have to explain why he drove a knife into my throat,” he said.
• “Jesse did not have his finger on the trigger,” he said. “It was my fault. I’ve said from the start I am guilty of manslaughter and I’m responsible for his death, but it wasn’t intentional.”
• Lamarre-Condon said he found a phone and called Triple Zero and went into “police mode” to try to “save” Baird.
• The accused said Davies grabbed the gun and pointed it at him, and later pulled the trigger and shot himself in front of Baird’s bedroom door. The Crown case is that Lamarre-Condon shot Davies through the door.
• He admitted to cleaning Baird’s house and disposing of the men’s bodies before turning himself in to police on February 23, 2024.

Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732), the Men’s Referral Service on 1300 766 491, and Lifeline on 13 11 14.

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“Was it obvious to you that he was dead?” Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, said of Baird.

“No. I knew that he was unresponsive,” Lamarre-Condon said.

The accused said he was “dialling Triple Zero” on a phone he found in the kitchen while moving towards the front door.

Warning: Graphic content

Lamarre-Condon has denied a suggestion by Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, that he executed Jesse Baird by firing a second shot into his head to make sure he was dead.

“I never executed Jesse Baird,” the accused said. He said he was “kneeling next to his body” after the shot and put Baird into the recovery position.

“I can see the vision in my head of checking his pulse,” he said.

He told the court that his police-issued firearm “would have had to have been at arm’s length” from Baird when it discharged accidentally and he was shot in the head.

Lamarre-Condon is now being asked about his evidence that he fell to the ground with Baird and the gun went off for a second time.

Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, cross-examines him about where the men landed in the kitchen.

“We had moved forward from the position of the [kitchen] wall,” Lamarre-Condon said.

The accused said that one of his priorities was to “put Jesse into the recovery position and get him help” after he had been shot for the second time. He said on Friday he was unaware at the time that the bullet had gone through his head because Baird “had a lot more hair” at the time.

Lamarre-Condon said the gun “flung backwards” into the vicinity of the living room.

“I did not look back to see where it went,” he said. “My priority now was to get him [Baird] help.”

Lamarre-Condon told the court on Friday that Baird “yanked” the gun after he was shot for the first time.

“He grabbed onto the front of the gun,” Lamarre-Condon said today. “He pulled it towards him at some point ... we’ve both gone down to the floor.

“It was a very good grip; it even caused me to go forward with him. I’ve got hold of his right arm with my left hand.”

Lamarre-Condon said he was holding the gun with his right hand and his index finger was “still on the trigger”.

Lamarre-Condon is being asked about a bullet cartridge police found on top of the kitchen cabinets in the Paddington terrace days after the men’s deaths.

“You weren’t located in that [kitchen] corner up against the wall [when you fired the gun for the first time], you were located in the doorway, shooting on a narrower angle,” the prosecutor said.

“I can’t give you an exact location, I was definitely in that corner, or up against the entryway, pinned up against it,” Lamarre-Condon said.

Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, is asking Lamarre-Condon to mark up a floor plan of Baird’s Paddington home.

He told the court on Friday that there were moving boxes in the hallway of the terrace and in the kitchen when he entered the house on February 19, 2024, and he is marking up the document to indicate where those boxes were.

The court has heard that Baird was moving out of the share house at the time of his death. Lamarre-Condon has told the court he was unaware of this, but has admitted to using Baird’s phone after he died to send messages to the former TV presenter’s housemates about the move.

Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield, SC, asks Lamarre-Condon about his evidence on Friday that he was pinned against a kitchen wall before he fired the first shot at Jesse Baird.

“I was pinned directly before I pushed [him] back and fired the shot,” Lamarre-Condon said.

Lamarre-Condon is back in the witness box and is being cross-examined about the first shot he says he fired at Jesse Baird.

He told the court on Friday that he had the gun in his right hand and “nudged him back”, anywhere from about 20 centimetres to a metre. He said that he still had a hold of Baird with his left hand, with his gun in his right hand.

He said this morning that he “pushed him back as far as I could”.

“He’s moving backwards facing towards me,” he said. He said he “let go” and fired a shot towards Baird’s right shoulder.

Lamarre-Condon told the court the first shot he fired at Baird was deliberate and “was the right move; I stand by it”. He was trying to disarm Baird, he said.

“I was pinned up against the kitchen wall,” he said. “I essentially had Jesse with his left forearm pinning me up against the wall and he was swinging around the knife.”

The accused said that “at certain points Jesse’s left forearm was against my chest and then he would move it and then he would swing the knife with his right hand and … many times during this struggle both my hands were on his right hand trying to hold the knife away.”

He reached for his gun after Baird slashed his shirt with a knife, he said during cross-examination.

“I just maintained my left hand holding his right arm away from me while I reached for my firearm,” he said.

“I just remember pointing and aiming towards his right shoulder. We were close. At this point, I think I pushed him, I had the gun in my right hand and I had nudged him back to get a good further shot at him at his right shoulder, so, anywhere from 20 centimetres to a metre, but I still had a hold of his right hand with my left hand.”

The accused told the court last week that he hid upstairs for a time at Baird’s share house after hearing a noise and took off the high-vis jacket over his shirt.

He came downstairs when he believed he heard the front door close and saw Baird in the kitchen when he was at the bottom of the stairs, he said.

“Honestly at that time I was just going to lift up the visor and just tell him it’s me and ask for my stuff back,” he said. But he said Baird spotted him and started yelling: “We’re getting robbed.”

Baird lunged towards him with a knife, he said. At one point, he added, Baird “tore my whole blue shirt open”.