Wieambilla inquest day 12: Witness reveals the moment Nathaniel Train went off-grid
A person who knew Nathaniel Train has told the Wieambilla inquest of the moment the former school principal went off-grid and a text they received from Gareth on the day of the massacre.
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Gareth Train sent a text message to someone who had been looking for his brother that said “you sent people to kill us – run”, after the murders of two police officers and their neighbour, the Wieambilla inquest heard.
A person who knew former school principal Nathaniel Train has told the inquest they became increasingly worried for his safety after he left the New South Wales town where he’d been working and went off-grid for a year.
But when they reached out to members of Nathaniel’s family – particularly his brother Gareth – they were met with “highly derogatory and abusive language” written in all capital letters.
The Wieambilla inquest is examining the murders of police constables Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold and local resident Alan Dare, as well as the shooting deaths of Nathaniel, Gareth and Stacey Train by the elite Special Emergency Response Team.
The horror attack on police unfolded within two minutes of four officers arriving at the Trains’ Wieambilla bush block on December 12, 2022, to ask after former school principal Nathaniel, who had been reported missing in New South Wales.
The Wains Rd property belonged to Nathaniel’s brother Gareth and his wife Stacey, although Stacey had previously been married to Nathaniel.
Constables McCrow and Arnold were fatally shot with high-powered rifles, initially fired by Nathaniel from a sniper hide, as the four police walked down the dirt driveway.
Constables Keely Brough and Randall Kirk managed to escape.
The Trains also shot and killed their neighbour Mr Dare when he saw smoke coming from their property and came to investigate.
All three Trains were shot and killed by SERT snipers after a lengthy shootout.
The witness, who can’t be identified for legal reasons, told the inquest Nathaniel had never appeared to be particularly religious and never attended church.
“All I knew is that he believed in God – that was it,” they said.
The witness said in the time they knew Nathaniel, he had a good relationship with police, was happy to follow medical advice and was always careful with using and storing firearms.
They said his position as the principal at a regional NSW school began to take its toll, with the witness describing it as a high-stress role at a “dysfunctional” school.
“He stepped into a role where there was something like 21 principals in the same amount of years,” they said.
“Lots of principals had just walked off. The school was pretty much dysfunctional.”
They said Nathaniel was starting work each day at 4am and working weekends.
“It was just a challenge. A huge challenge. Every day was a challenge,” they said.
The witness said they were not aware of whether Nathaniel had been receiving increasing amounts of communication from his brother Gareth or Gareth’s wife Stacey during this time.
“I wasn’t with Nathaniel every single minute,” they said.
They said they were aware of a trip Nathaniel took where he spent a night in Wieambilla with Gareth and Stacey in January 2021.
“Whenever Nathaniel visited it was part of a … family trip,” they said.
The witness said Nathaniel had explained he would be travelling to Mount Isa to visit his daughter Madelyn, who had recently become engaged, before spending a night in Wieambilla and then travelling on to see his son Aidan.
The inquest has previously heard Nathaniel, Gareth and Stacey had held a meeting at Wieambilla at this time they called “church” where they discussed the end of the world.
The inquest heard that in August 2021, Nathaniel suffered a serious cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated.
It occurred during COVID lockdowns, which meant those close to him were not able to travel to see him.
The inquest heard Gareth and Stacey remained in contact with Nathaniel while he was in hospital and advised him against having an internal defibrillator inserted.
The witness said doctors attempted to encourage Nathaniel to undergo the procedure but admitted they could not “make anyone do something that they don’t want to do”.
“He did at one stage say that he would get an ICD (implantable cardioverter-defibrillator) … and then he changed his mind again,” they said.
“Nathaniel was always a strong, confident person and I guess progressively he became more emotional about things.
“Things became insurmountable, I suppose, in those four months … after the cardiac arrest.”
The witness said they last saw Nathaniel on December 16 when he said he needed to go to visit his children.
He told them he would be camping and took his LandCruiser with a rooftop tent.
The court heard Nathaniel had stopped taking his heart medication a month earlier and that he’d been speaking to Gareth about moving to a naturopathic regime.
The witness attempted to call and text Nathaniel after that but he did not reply. He eventually made contact and provided a new telephone number, explaining calls and texts were not getting through.
He began sending scripture passages to the witness and talking to them about biblical matters and the risk of having Covid vaccinations.
Eventually, on May 30, 2022, the witness asked Nathaniel to not call, text or email.
But they told the inquest they maintained contact with Nathaniel’s children to make sure he was still in contact and OK.
The witness said they believed Nathaniel had been camping throughout this time but was probably close to the Wieambilla property.
At some point, Nathaniel broke contact with everyone and the witness became so concerned, they accessed his email in an attempt to check on his welfare.
“He just stopped contacting people … which was extremely concerning to me,” the witness said.
The witness said around October, 2022, they attempted to email Stacey to ask after Nathaniel’s welfare.
They also discussed sending some correspondence to Nathaniel by post to the Wains Rd property and asked whether Stacey could pass it on.
Stacey emailed back “we’ll bin anything you send”, the inquest heard.
Another email to Stacey was answered by Gareth, who wrote: “Stacey’s reply was polite – I’m not so polite”.
On December 8, police put out a missing persons alert and shared Nathaniel’s photograph on social media channels.
The witness said following this, they saw a series of emails on Nathaniel’s email account that involved correspondence between Gareth and Nathaniel’s son Aidan.
The witness said they passed those emails on to NSW police on the morning of December 12.
The witness told the inquest they received a text message from Gareth that night with the words: “you sent people to kill us – run”.
The inquest was told the witness had been speaking with Aidan about making a missing persons report.
On December 5, the inquest heard Aidan wrote in an email that it would be “best case police locate Nathaniel without any hostile interactions with Stacey and Gary”.
The witness said at that time when speaking with Aidan they had no knowledge Gareth had a cache of unlicensed firearms or had any interest in military tactics.
They were also not of the view it could end in harm for police.
“Just that he’d be angry about it,” the person said of their view of the comments made about Gareth in the December 5 email.
“As I said I just thought he was a keyboard warrior. I had no idea.”
HUNT FOR REMOTE PROPERTIES REVEALED
The inquest was told that after he crossed the border Nathaniel had made statements that he was going to be “living off grid” and camping with his mobile switched off or unavailable for periods of time.
Investigators found Nathaniel’s phone had been pinging to a tower around the Wieambilla property from February 28, 2022, suggesting he was “in or around the property”.
An analysis of electronic communication between the trio between August and December 2022 found there was “fewer and fewer” communications in the lead-up to the police shootings.
A message from Nathaniel, believed to be to Gareth and Stacey on October 9, 2022, had a long message which included the statement: “Passing through. Everything is quiet and not going to disturb you. The phone is going off, heading out bush, try to get in contact with you in a few months.”
Detective Inspector Suzanne Newton said investigators had not been able to find any campsites to confirm Nathaniel had been camping.
People in the region told investigators that they had also not seen the Trains before the shooting.
Counsel assisting the inquiry, Ruth O’Gorman KC, said a Chinchilla shopkeeper later told investigators that three months before the shooting she had seen three people outside of the shop that she had not seen in town before.
She said the shopkeeper said a man and woman later entered her shop and told the shopkeeper they were looking for camouflage clothing.
The employee spoke with the woman for a number of minutes who told her that she used to be a teacher but didn’t get vaccinated and was no longer working.
After the tragedy the shopkeeper confirmed it was the Trains. No one else in the local area had any recollection of interacting with the Trains in the area, the inquest was told.
A real estate agency near Gin Gin also was contacted electronically by someone who had identified himself as Gareth Train in September 2022.
The agent had a meeting and met with a man and took him to properties.
The man expressed an interest in buying a remote and isolated property somewhere around Bundaberg or Gin Gin.
During the conversation the man told the agent his “brother owned a property at Tara” but they were looking to sell the property for a larger, more remote, block.
The man discussed topics including guns, anti-vaccination sentiments and anti-police sentiments with the real estate agent who formed the view he was “not a particularly pleasant person”.
The inquest was told there were 277 shots fired reports made in and around a large geographical area including Tara, Wieambilla and Chinchilla in the four years leading up to the police killings.
One month prior to the incident, there were five shots fired reports made to police over that geographical area.
Of those, one was in the Wieambilla area.
The incidents were followed up by police and none had involvement with the Trains.
DEATH AND HARM: TRAIN EMAILS SENT TO NSW POLICE
Three Queensland police officers have said they would have approached a missing persons inquiry at the Trains’ Wieambilla property differently had NSW Police handed over concerning emails.
The inquest has previously heard a series of emails between Gareth Train and Aidan Train were forwarded to police in NSW on the morning of December 12 - hours before they asked their Queensland counterparts to look for Nathaniel at his brother’s Wieambilla bush block.
The inquest also previously heard the email exchange included a comment from Gareth that he would be “waiting for police with an eye open”, that Gareth had a cache of illegal weapons hidden on the property and that a visit from police would only result in “death and harm”.
The inquest heard Detective Inspector Newton interviewed Constable Stephanie Abbott, who accepted the job from NSW Police and tasked it, her superior Acting Sergeant Justin Drier and his superior then-Detective Inspector Gary Watts about the emails.
Under questioning by Lachlan Gyles SC for the NSW Police Commissioner, Det Insp Newton was asked about interviews she conducted with the three officers.
Det Insp Newton agreed Constable Abbott said had she been sent the emails, she would have asked her Sergeant for advice before sending the four officers onto the Wieambilla property.
Her sergeant, Justin Drier, said he would have asked his inspector and Det Insp Watts said he would have involved intelligence officers before moving forward.
“You would agree that dealing with hypothetical questions after the event can always be difficult because it’s hard for individuals to put what in fact happened out of their minds,” Mr Gyles asked.
“And that problem, you would agree, can be particularly acute when the subsequent events were highly emotive and tragic.
“(And) it’s hard to imagine a more emotive and tragic set of circumstances
than the present case.”
Det Insp Newton agreed it was an emotive situation but disagreed that the situation was hypothetical.
“When you talk about hypothetical question - it wasn’t a hypothetical question. What I in fact did is show Constable Abbott the emails that were missing from NSW and she in turn commented as to what she would do,” she said.
GUNS, COMPOUND BOW AND ‘RAMBO-STYLED KNIVES’
Constable Michael Brownlee was tasked with investigating Nathaniel’s border breach on 17 December in 2021 after he damaged a gate at the Queensland border with Talwood.
A farmer saw Nathaniel’s Landcruiser drive into floodwaters after the incident.
A farmhand then got on a tractor and went to help Nathaniel.
He towed his four-wheel-drive back to the farm workshop 3km up the road and then dropped Nathaniel into the township of Talwood, at his request.
The farmhand told the officer he had seen a backpack with two firearms attached and Nathaniel had also grabbed a compound bow and “Rambo-styled knives”.
He let Nathaniel use his mobile phone to make a call, that Const Brownlee later confirmed was Gareth.
The officer said after making a report at his station in Goondiwindi the job was sent to Chinchilla, suggesting police go to the Wains Rd property where Gareth lived to see if Nathaniel was there to charge him for an offence of wilful damage.
He said the Chinchilla station sent the job back to Goondiwindi police in about January in which they requested formal statements, from the farmer and farmhand, as well as a receipt for the damage to the gate from the Goondiwindi Regional Council.
After Const Brownlee took statements from the farmer and farmhand they told him about firearms they had found near the car after floodwaters had receded, as well as ammunition. Police then seized the guns.
Const Brownlee then sent the file back to Chinchilla police but with an additional charge of not securing firearms and ammunition.
The officer said after Nathaniel couldn’t be found he spoke with supervisors who agreed it was appropriate to take out an arrest warrant.
He also contacted weapons licensing who told him about the two firearms seized by police were firearms that should be at a gun shop in Parramatta in NSW and another should be in Mackay.
The second time he called the branch they said the firearms were not owned by Nathaniel at that one of them should have been in possession of someone in Far North Queensland.
But subsequent investigations by police there found the person had left for Portugal 10-12 years earlier.
IF WE CAN’T DRIVE IN, WE DON’T WALK IN
A police officer formerly based at Chinchilla has told the inquest he made two visits to the Trains’ Wieambilla property to ask after Nathaniel but decided against entering the property for safety reasons.
Senior Constable Nathan Rigg was based at Chinchilla during 2021 until mid-2022 and was tasked with visiting Wains Rd to find Gareth Train.
He said the purpose of this was to ask Gareth if he knew Nathaniel’s whereabouts because of an outstanding warrant for wilful damage.
The inquest has previously heard Nathaniel damaged a COVID border gate, as well as illegally dumping firearms.
Sen Const Rigg said he decided against entering the Trains’ bush block when he drove up on August 5 - accompanied by Constable Randall Kirk - because he’d been told by senior police not to enter a rural property on foot where the house was a long way from the road.
“If we can’t drive in, we don’t walk in,” he said he was told.
Sen Const Rigg explained that some rural driveways were 200m to 1km from the road, meaning an officer might have to run that far to get back to the police vehicle if something went wrong.
“That’s how I tended to operate … in my time at Chinchilla,” he said.
He said given he had no evidence that Nathaniel was at the property and that Gareth did not have to answer any questions, he did not consider it worth breaking the lock on the front gate to be able to drive in.
He said he was also aware that the Train brothers were both effectively “clean skins” and had no criminal history.
“The last thing I wanted to do was break a lock and then ask for a favour,” Sen Const Rigg said.
“So leaving a calling card was fine.”
The officer said he spotted two cameras, including one by the letterbox, so he waved his card in front of the camera before putting it in the box.
He told the inquest he later attempted to call Gareth and then returned to the property on August 12 when he’d had no reply.
He said on that occasion, he shone his torch into the letterbox and saw his card still inside.
He told the inquest he updated the job by saying he believed the property was unoccupied.
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