Opinion: 7 key questions about horror Wieambilla killings

There are seven key questions about the horrific incident at Wieambilla that left two Queensland police officers and another person dead that need to be answered, writes Terry Goldsworthy.

This week saw the horrific execution style killing of two young police officers and a neighbour at a rural property west of Brisbane.

Both the policing community and the wider community are in shock.

We are struggling to understand why this happened and how?

Part of the reason for this is the circumstances in which these deaths occurred and how they were carried out. This was not a high-risk raid looking for wanted offenders where the risk of injury or death were high.

One of the shooters, Nathaniel Train.

The offenders by all reports were not hardened criminals with a history of violent crime, but ex-teachers.

The information we have is that this was a simple missing person inquiry, a low-risk policing activity in normal circumstances, but something was not normal when those police began to walk up that driveway.

Fatal shootings of police are rare in Australia compared to the US.

In the last five years no police officer had been fatally shot in Australia, in the same period in the US some 244 police officers were killed by firearms.

A study into police deaths in Australia, showed that 28 officers were killed by attacks between 1981 and 2007.

Of those 22 were killed by firearms, less than one per year.

That is not to say policing is not a dangerous occupation, it is.

In 28 years of policing, I was only involved in one incident in which an offender was shot, that was a high-risk raid on an OMCG member during the hours of darkness in the early morning.

While there were many situations where I drew my firearm that were high risk during my career, tactical planning and the deployment of appropriate resources lessened the probability of death or injury to police or the suspects.

The crime scene at Wieambilla . Picture: 9 News.

This is not the first time we have seen police ambushed. In the 1988 Walsh Street killings in Victoria two young police were lured to a back street and then executed by hardened criminals with a grudge against the police.

In 1995 two police officers in NSW were ambushed and killed at Crescent Head by an offender dressed in camouflage and armed with a high-powered rifle while responding to a domestic violence incident.

But questions remain about the incident this week.

Who contacted the NSW police and asked for the missing person inquiry?

Why were two crews dispatched from different stations for a simple missing person inquiry?

What intelligence holdings did the police have and were the young police attending properly briefed?

Why were four officers with only a few of years’ service between them sent?

Why was there no senior officer present?

Why does it appear that the offenders were prepared to attack the police when they arrived?

What motivated these killers to engage in such horrendous actions?

Constable Rachel McCrow was killed during an ambush at Wieambilla

These questions and more will need to be answered by the coroner’s inquest into all six deaths.

But first the officers will need to be laid to rest with the honour they deserve, the time for questions will come later.

Dr Terry Goldsworthy is Associate Professor, Criminal Justice and Criminology at Bond University