Beau Lamarre-Condon has told a court that NSW Police rules on service firearms and bullets are ‘lax’, before he broke down over suicidal ideation claims.
The court was shown footage of the former police officer collecting his gun from Balmain Police Station on February 18, 2024, the day before the alleged murders.
He agreed that the gun was in his backpack when he left the station that day at 5.45pm.
But he denied the suggestion by Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield SC that he was trying to conceal the firearm from the CCTV after faking a return.
Mr Hatfield asked: ‘You faked the return, you planned to use that to murder Jesse Baird the next day.’
Lamarre-Condon said: ‘That is not correct.’
He told the court that he took the gun on February 18 because he was ‘contemplating suicide that night’.
He said: ‘The bullets were already in the magazine, I didn’t need to prepare it for anything.’
Earlier, the court heard Lamarre-Condon fired two shots into a national park on February 1, 2024.
In court on Friday, Mr Hatfield asked about the possibility of his supervisors auditing police bullets and finding out that two were missing.
He told the court that supervisor checks on police firearms were ‘lax’.
The court then heard that Lamarre-Condon went to a Hertz car rental dealership with his mother, Coleen Lamarre, after collecting his gun from the police station.
Lamarre-Condon reiterated that he was suicidal at that stage and that he turned his phone to airplane mode to talk to his mother about it, before she went into Hertz alone.
He said that he always turned his phone to airplane mode before talking about mental health because he didn’t trust it not to listen to his conversation.
Mr Hatfield asked: ‘She left you with a gun while she went into Hertz?’
He replied: ‘My mum didn’t know I had my gun with me.’
Asked why he brought it with him, Lamarre-Condon said: ‘I couldn’t leave it at home, I didn’t have a safe.’
In NSW, guns must be kept inside a secure box.
Lamarre-Condon rejected the suggestion that he planned to kill Baird, saying: ‘You wouldn’t bring a vehicle linked to your mum to a murder’.
He said it would make more sense to ‘get a stolen vehicle’.
Mr Hatfield replied: ‘No one says it’s a good plan, that’s why you’re sitting here.’
