‘I’m f---en serious, I’m going to blow the whole place up’: Inside Brisbane highrise siege horror

Former police officer Keith Banks has shared the terrifying inside story of how he stopped an armed man from detonating a potentially horrific highrise explosion.

Saturday November 27 1993 was a beautiful day in Brisbane.

I’d been in the Major Crime Squad for a while and was running two undercover operations.

I was with Mick, my usual partner and driving our covert car along Coronation Drive from Toowong when the unmistakeable VKR tone signalling an urgent job sounded from the police radio under the dash.

Mick and I stopped talking.

“Any unit in the vicinity of the MLC building, shots fired by a male in the foyer.”

The VKR operator repeated this broadcast twice and we could hear units responding from around the CBD and suburbs.

I looked at Mick.

“We’re not far, hold on.”

Keith Banks today.

I activated the single tone siren and floored it. I thought of the worst-case scenario – of people being shot down by a gunman stalking through the building.

I had been issued with a five-shot Smith and Wesson revolver with a three-inch barrel.

I regularly attended range training and was also a part-time Operational Survival Tactics instructor, so I was confident with the weapon.

I stopped the car about 10 metres from the entrance to the MLC Centre on George St in the CBD.

A Channel Nine camera operator was standing on the footpath directly in front of the entrance, aiming her camera inside.

A few uniformed police were on the footpath as well and one was on the front steps of the MLC building.

There was no cordon, and it didn’t appear as if anyone was in charge. I pulled my revolver out and stuffed two six-round speed strips into my front pocket. I was already in tactical mode.

I ran towards the camera operator.

“Police! Move away from there now!” I yelled.

Someone had to take control of the situation and quickly.

I instructed nearby officers to form an inner cordon and to call for a negotiator and the Special Emergency Response Team (SERT). The presence of media and the public also needed to be restricted.

I ran up the stairs to the foyer and saw Mal, a uniformed sergeant, peering from behind a column.

I stopped beside him, using the column as cover.

I didn’t know if there were hostages in the building or not. The police communications operator had broadcast that the building had been cleared, but she was only broadcasting the information she’d been given. Never assume.

“Where is this prick?” I asked, a little louder than I should have.

“He’s in there, Banksy.” Mal jerked his head to indicate the foyer.

I still had my gun in my right hand when I heard a deep male voice say, “Put your gun down or I’ll blow this place up.”

I looked around the column and, as my vision adjusted, I made out an overweight bearded man with long, dank hair sitting on the floor with his back against the rear wall.

His legs were stretched in front of him and a rifle was cradled across his lap. I could see he had something in a box and what looked like old army webbing in front of the box.

The gunman and I were about four metres apart and looking at one another squarely in the eye.

I had my gun at my side. Okay, I thought, if he raises that rifle, I can take him from here; two or three to the chest and one or two to the head.

That was how I’d been trained. I was back in tactical mode. Any compassion I’d had was long gone.

I stepped further inside, towards where the gunman sat. I kept my gun at my side, pointed downward but ready if I needed it.

The ceiling to the floor glass partition on my right had at least three bullet holes in it, but it was still intact.Adrenaline was coursing through my body.

Cautiously I made my way forwards, keeping my eyes trained on the gunman’s box. I wanted to see what he had in it. There were sticks of gelignite, and a lot of them.

I tried to keep the fear off my face. He was also holding electrical wires and had a 12-volt battery on the floor beside him. This was an improvised explosive device (IED). This situation had suddenly become a lot more serious.

I’d seen trained negotiators deal with high-risk offenders many times before, both in real life and in exercises.

I raised my left hand slowly, palm outwards, in what I hoped was a calming gesture and said, “It’s okay, mate. I’m a police officer, just take it easy. I’ll give my gun to this guy, okay?”

I handed my gun to Mal, who was close behind me. I had sworn I’d never surrender my gun under any circumstance, but that box was full of enough gelignite sticks to kill the three of us and potentially whoever was outside.

Mal still had his gun so, if it all went to shit, it would be up to him.

The gunman looked at me and then at Mal.

“Yeah, okay,” he said. “Just don’t do nothing quick. Turn around and show me your back. Then lift up your jeans, I don’t want no ankle holsters.”

I turned to show him I was unarmed.

Keith Banks at the front on the SAS instructors' course.

“Yep, no problem,” I said, trying to calm him. “I’m not carrying anything else, mate. I’m not trying to trick you.”

I lifted the left and right legs of my jeans to show him I had nothing there.

He seemed satisfied. “Yeah, okay, come in.”

Mal and I slowly moved further into the foyer. We were about two metres from him when he looked at me and said, “Why don’t you come in and have a talk. I won’t hurt you.”

“No offence, mate,” I said with my hands raised to chest level, “but I’m pretty scared and I don’t want to get too close.”

I remembered that the first thing the negotiators I’d worked with did was to introduce themselves. “Take it easy, mate. My name’s Keith. What’s yours?”

“Frank.”

“Is there anyone you want to see Frank?”

“Maybe a doctor. I’ve got no one. I’m alone,” he replied. He told me the name of a doctor he’d been seeing. I asked Mal to go outside and have someone call the doctor.

I took a good look at Frank. He was in his early 40s and had shoulder-length black hair and a long black beard. He was dressed in jeans, old runners and a faded T-shirt. He was overweight and looked broken.

He was smoking a cigarette with his left hand, which let him keep his right hand on the rifle. His finger lay across the trigger guard, exactly as taught in the military. It was then that I put two and two together and hoped I was wrong.

“What have you got in the box, Frank?” I asked.

Former Queensland undercover police officer Keith Banks pictured with his family in (L-R daughter Julia, wife Jennifer, daughter Karly and Keith Banks).

He put his cigarette in his mouth and reached into the cardboard box. I thought he was going to detonate it there and then.

Instead, he removed something and tossed it in my direction. I caught it with both hands. A third of a stick of gelignite. Bad enough on its own, but it was sweating, too. I hadn’t been in the bomb squad for a few years, but I knew what that meant.

The substance leaking through the wrapping was nitroglycerine, which meant the explosive was old and unstable.

It could explode if knocked or dropped on the floor. My heart didn’t just skip a beat; it skipped 20.

Mal was now back in the foyer behind me. Even though I didn’t know him, he was prepared to step into danger with me. I passed him the explosive.

“Mate, take this outside, and treat it very carefully,” I said.

I turned back to Frank to see he was grinning at me.

“You look like you could use a smoke,” he said. “Want one?”

“Well, I gave up, but this probably isn’t a bad time to start again,” I replied.

Frank slid a pack of cigarettes and a lighter across the floor to me.

Smoking over unstable gelignite was not the smartest move, but there I was, sitting on the floor of the MLC building, facing someone with military training and armed with a rifle and a homemade bomb. I lit a cigarette. “Thanks, Frank. So, what’s going on, mate?”

“I’m f--ken serious. These c--ts have stolen from me and treated me like shit. I’m going to blow the whole place up and me too. I’ve got 15 more sticks here and three dets wired up.”

Mal was back inside. He sat down close to the entrance.

If it looked like Frank was about to do something stupid, Mal had given himself the chance to be up and gone. I couldn’t blame him. I, on the other hand, would be royally screwed.

There was no way I’d make it out before the bomb went off.

Frank’s IED was straightforward.

Former Queensland undercover police officer Keith Banks in 1977 processing an arrest during a street march against the Bjelke-Petersen government's anti-march legislation.

I could see three electric detonators and the detonator wires bared to expose the ends.

All he had to do was touch the ends to the positive and negative terminals on the battery and there’d be bits of both of us raining across the river, on to people strolling along South Bank enjoying their ice creams.

I considered diving over him to shove the battery out of the way but discounted the idea. Even though I only topped out at 82kg, my weight falling on the box risked detonating the unstable gelignite.

“If anybody comes through that door, I’m blowing it.”

He’d gone from calm to angry in a few seconds.

I tried to quieten him down. “No one will come in, Frank. Can you just let me go outside and I’ll get them all to move back, okay?”

“Yeah, tell them all to f--k off.”

His agitation was scaring me.

All it would take was a second to touch the wires to the battery and it would all be dust and dark.

I walked to the door and yelled at the police outside to move back. I couldn’t see any bosses on the scene, but I knew they’d be on the way.

“Okay, Frank, can I come back in?” I asked, turning back.

“Come in, just don’t do nothing stupid. If you’re f--ken setting me up, I’ll blow us both.”

I walked back and sat down in front of him. I decided on a straightforward approach.

“What would it take for you to hand me the rifle? You don’t need it to blow this place up.”

To my surprise, he looked at me and said, “Yeah, I’ll give it to you. But you need to get me a six pack, and I’m low on smokes.”

“Mate, a six pack is out of the question.” I paused. “But I can probably get you a pot of beer.”

I stood up and walked outside.

The police presence had grown since Mal and I had gone inside, and there was now a team of SERT officers in single file pressed against the wall outside the entrance, fully kitted with vests, helmets and automatic weapons.

Police cars lined the streets, and the media cameras were now all on the far corner of George and Adelaide streets.

Plainclothes officers wearing vests with POLICE stencilled across the front, some of them brandishing shotguns, had formed an inner cordon.

But more importantly there was now a commissioned officer on the scene, someone I knew would listen to me. I walked up to him.

“Mate, I can get him out, I’m sure of it,” I said.

“But he’s on edge, and we don’t need to set him off.”

I described where the gunman was, his weapon, the IED and the risk factors. Then I hit him with my unusual request, the pot of beer.

Alcohol was strictly forbidden in a siege or hostage situation, but I didn’t particularly care about rules that prevented resolution.

“If it goes bad, I’ll be blown to pieces anyway and you can tell them it was all my fault,” I said.

He broke into a grin. “Deal.”

A detective I knew well offered to get the cigarettes and beer. I asked Mal to bring them in when they arrived and went back inside to my new acquaintance.

I walked inside and could hear my rational voice asking what the hell I was doing.

Several things happen when you are very scared. Y

our senses kick into high alert, you see minute details with clarity and time seems to slow. I could see the beads of sweat on Frank’s forehead and hear my heart beating.

The glass partition beside us was starting to groan, its structure weakened by the bullets.

Mal walked in carrying the pot of beer. It looked damn good. He handed it to me with the cigarettes, and again eased himself on to the floor near the entrance.

He was aware of the danger but continued to back me up.

I walked up to Frank and looked him in the eye.

“You first,” I said. I forced a smile and put the beer and cigarettes on the floor.

He handed me the rifle with his left hand, keeping his right with the bared wires near the battery.

“It was empty anyway, but thanks for the beer,” Frank chuckled.

I pointed the rifle towards the wall and ejected the round. It fell to the floor and I picked it up. It had been fired.

“Mate, you’ve got me in the shit because I broke the rules for an empty weapon. Good one,” I said, bursting into genuine laughter and handing him the beer.

Sunday Mail front page from the MLC building siege.

I put the cigarettes on the floor closer to him. He took a long sip of the beer.

“I was getting sick of holding the bloody thing anyway.” He quickly gulped down the rest of the beer and lit another cigarette.

I started talking to him and asked what he’d done in his life for work. He’d worked in a lot of jobs but nothing serious after he’d “come back”.

I knew it. “Come back from where?” I asked.

“Vietnam.”

That’s when I really started to worry.

A lot of veterans I’d met were screwed up; quite a few were suicidal. He’d been a combat engineer, which explained why his IED looked so professional. I’d finally found the common ground.

I knew quite a few veterans, I said, and I’d spent a lot of time at Enoggera Army barracks on Anzac Day, Long Tan Day and Remembrance Day. If he understood our common ground, I was hopeful I could encourage him to walk out of the building with me.

I asked him again what had brought him here, and bit by bit he told me his story.

Gun to the Head book by Keith Banks.

This is an edited extract from Gun to the Head by Keith Banks, Allen and Unwin, $30