Wieambilla inquest day 5: Inside the hero extraction team that saved Constable Keely Brough’s life
A Wieambilla extraction team member has told an inquest of how his crew helped brave Constable Keely Brough sprint through firey bushland and away from the crazed cop-killing trio.
Police & Courts
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Extraction team member Senior Constable Duncan Miller has told of the moment he yelled out code words for Wieambilla survivor Constable Keely Brough to run to safety after hours of torment hiding in the bushes.
He said Constable Brough was too scared to stand up to run to her safety after the ordeal, because she didn’t know who was around her.
The religious extremists had deliberately lit fires on their Western Downs property trying to flush her out.
A marathon inquest into the murders of police officers Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold, good Samaritan Alan Dare and the shooting deaths of the cop-hating Train trio on Monday.
The two constables were killed by the trio within minutes of their arrival at the Trains’ Western Downs property on December 12, 2022.
The four officers were there to conduct a missing persons inquiry but instead were ambushed by the Trains, who had set up sniper hides to lay in wait for police, who they considered to be the enemy.
Neighbour Mr Dare was killed by the Trains when he saw smoke coming from their property and came to investigate.
Nathaniel, a former school principal, had been reported missing to NSW Police, who had asked their Queensland counterparts to look for him at the property of his brother Gareth.
Gareth was married to Stacey, who had previously been married to Nathaniel.
Constable Randall Kirk managed to escape the property under gunfire while constable Keely Brough hid from the trio for two hours on the property while they lit fires to try to flush her out.
As the group of extraction team officers went into the property they all spread out to points of cover.
Senior Constable Miller said he pushed around to the northern side of the fence where the burnt out police vehicle was.
He went in the direction he thought he could find Constable Brough and then he got behind a tree. He could see other officers along the tree line.
He then spoke to communications and told them they were at the front gate. He asked where Constable Brough was.
“And comms came back saying ‘yep she’s in the bush’,” Senior Constable Miller told the inquest.
“I said ‘we need to find to her, because we’re ready to go, we’re all here’.
“What I got back from comms is that she doesn’t believe that we are there, we are police, or she is afraid that we weren’t police and she didn’t want to come out.
“So I said ‘we are’. The comms operator came up with some code words, ‘pink and blue’.
“So I’ve yelled that out a couple of times,” he said.
“From my location, I had a tree, I’m looking at Andy Gates and looking at the driveway.
“Over to my left is where Keely … I didn’t actually see her stand up.” Constable Brough then stood up and ran towards the front gate.
“So when I’m looking at the trees she is running … she’s running along the bush,” Senior Constable Miller said.
“I remember she is running with her firearm.
“I was yelling at her to holster her weapon and then she did.
“And then she has launched herself over the fence.”
When Constable Brough escaped, she embraced her Chinchilla colleague Constable Stephanie Abbott.
Senior Constable Miller – who had come from Toowoomba and didn’t know all the officers involved – then ran over to her.
“And that’s when I saw her with Steph Abbott,” he said.
Senior Constable Miller then got another officer to drive Constable Brough with Constable Stephanie Abbott, out in Mr Dare’s vehicle.
“You could just see that she had a terrible … like she was traumatised by what had happened,” he said.
“I just wanted her to get out of there.
“It looked like Steph knew her because they embraced.
“I then got on the radio, told comms that Keely was coming out and gave the description of the car and gave them the rego.”
Both officers from the extraction team were thanked for their courage and bravery by lawyers representing the families of constables Arnold and McCrow and Queensland Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski.
They were also commended by State Coroner Terry Ryan.
”I also acknowledge your leadership and courage on that day – thank you,” he said.
OFFICER BREAKS DOWN AT INQUEST
A police officer who led a rescue team onto the Wieambilla property of three armed conspiracy theorists has broken down as he described seeing Constable Brough break from cover and run towards him.
Sergeant Andrew Gates has detailed the evening he and a group of police officers, armed with rifles and Glocks, entered the Train property to rescue two officers they knew had been shot and a third who was being hunted by gunmen.
Sergeant Gates said every officer who went onto the property had volunteered to go into an active armed offender situation to rescue their fallen colleagues.
He said he knew people on the property were armed with long range rifles but little else.
Sgt Gates described how a convoy of three police cars approached the Train property, first stopping on Wains Rd where he told his colleagues they should be “prepared to engage”.
Asked whether any of them hesitated before entering the property, Sgt Gates said: “Everyone was there voluntarily and everyone was prepared to do what needed to be done.”
“Even the ones who didn’t have rifles?” counsel assisting the coroner Ruth O’Gomran KC asked.
“Especially the ones who didn’t have rifles,” he said.
He said after approaching the front gates, they continued inside on foot, attempting to use trees and bush as cover.
Sgt Gates said he soon saw the body of a police officer on the ground.
“I could see a police uniform. I didn’t know who it was at that stage,” he said.
“I say (over the radio) I see an officer down in the driveway of the property. The comms operator said is that another officer or the initial officer?
“I said, the initial officer.
“I turn around and scan behind me. (Other officers) are all staggered trying to find bits of cover, moving forward on the property.”
He said some of his colleagues had been instructed to shout certain colours to let Constable Brough know where they were and where to run.
The inquest has previously heard Constable Brough spent more than two hours hiding in grass eight inches high as the Trains lit fires to flush her out.
She spent the entire two hours on the phone to a triple-0 operator because police radios were not working properly due to a lack of reception.
He said after his colleagues shouted the code words, Keely suddenly appeared, running towards them.
“Moving forward I see Keely running down the left hand side,” he said through tears.
“She’s running down the left hand side.
“She’s out in the open. I yell to her ‘keep your cover, keep to the tree line’.
“She’s got her Glock in her hands and she’s running for her life. She goes past and that’s the last time I see her.”
Sgt Gates said he moved forward and saw another body in the grass.
“I get onto comms and I say I’ve seen a second officer,” he said.
“I move closer at that point. I ask comms for an officer to come to drive a vehicle onto the property to drive past where we were up to the officer who was on the ground in the driveway.”
Sgt Gates said he instructed the vehicle to “punch through the gate” and “prepare to take fire”.
“I’ve gone over and that’s when I realised it was Rachel,” he said.
“I tried to do a … drag, grabbing her by the shoulders and pretty much nearly ripped Rachel’s shirt off.
“I couldn’t work out why it wasn’t working.
“I then picked her up by the shoulder and leg. I knew she had a gunshot wound to the leg because I could feel it.”
He said they opened the rear driver’s side door of a car that had arrived before trying again to pick up Constable McCrow by her vest.
He said it was at that point he realised her vest had been removed. Sgt Gates said as he picked Constable McCrow up, her head turned towards him.
“It was at that point her head turned to me and I realised she was deceased,” he said through tears.
Sgt Gates said he put her inside the car and the other rear door opened as two officers tried to put the second officer inside.
“I knew it was Matty then. I knew Matt was deceased as well,” he said.
He said an officer driving the rescue car had put ballistic vests on the front windscreen to provide some protection while officers with rifles stood in the trees providing cover.
“I think (another officer) said let’s go and they said they haven’t got Matt in yet,” Sgt Gates said.
“I can’t work out why shots aren’t coming towards us yet.”
He said they got Constable Arnold into the car and the vehicle reversed back down the driveway.
“At that point I told everybody to move back to the fence line,” Sgt Gates said.
CHRISSY! RUN!
A Senior Sergeant who drove from Toowoomba to Wieambilla in response to the massacre has told the inquest of the horrors of the shootout.
Senior Sergeant Christina Esselink said on the way she called for two police helicopters, the dog squad and a team of officers with rifles to be deployed to the scene.
Sen Sgt Esselink told the inquest a team of Toowoomba officers with rifles – including police from military backgrounds and firearms instructors – passed her on the road as she rushed to the scene.
“Before I’ve actually pulled up, I’ve received a phone call from one of my people (from Toowoomba). It was my understanding there was trouble at the gate,” she said.
“He asked permission to go forward.”
She said she then heard over the radio frantic calls for a car to block the gates of the Train property to prevent their escape.
“Coming through the radio (was), we need a vehicle at the gate, we need a vehicle at that gate … no keys in the ignition, we need a vehicle,” she said.
“I remember them saying they (the gunmen) were starting up a car. It was a frantic sort of … yeah.”
Sen Sgt Esselink said on arrival, she saw a blue car that she now knows to be Mr Dare’s vehicle, two police officers and Constable Brough walking towards an ambulance.
“The back of her hair was matted, she was walking all rubber-legged,” she said.
“I knew it was really bad.”
Sen Sgt Esselink said she made the decision to drive her car down to the front gates.
“I knew my vehicle drove terribly, big and ugly and strong. We gotta go, just get it down there.
“I just used the acronym, what’s important now, what’s important now.”
She said she drove down to the front gate with local officers who showed her where to go.
Senior Sergeant Esselink dropped the officers off and then parked the car in the middle of the gate area which was open.
She said she opened the door and grabbed her police iPad to hear loud gunfire.
“And then it was like ‘bang, bang, bang’,” Senior Sergeant Esselink told the inquest.
“And I thought oh geez that is big.
“I grew up on a farm and a .22 (sounds like) ‘pop, pop, pop’,” she said.
“This was like: big and it was close.
“I thought ‘we’re in trouble, we are in serious trouble here.’
“I thought it was large calibre and close.”
Senior Sergeant Esselink said she got down low in the car.
“And as I was driving down I noticed a tree. And I thought OK that’s cover, that’s cover,” she said.
“As I got out of the car I’m looking for my tree and I can’t find it. It’s just small.
“One of my fellas – I was trying to just find cover anywhere, it was just sparse – he screamed at me: ‘Chrissy! Run!” she said.
“And then I’ve bolted and he’s lifted me and just shoved me behind.
“I ran rubber-legged over towards him.”
Senior Sergeant Esselink said she walked up part of the road before she was picked up by a vehicle.
She said she saw Mr Dare’s body at the scene and that he was dead.
“There was shots and gunfire and we had nowhere to put him,” Senior Sergeant Esselink said, adding that he had been murdered and it was also a crime scene.
“It was sort of respectful to leave him if that makes sense. I didn’t know how long we were going to be gone for. Everything was just crazy, crazy, at the time.”
FOUR CARLOADS READY TO HELP
A sergeant who took control of the police forward command close to the Wieambilla shooting has told a court he had “four carloads” of volunteers when he asked officers to put their lives on the line to rescue injured and trapped colleagues.
Miles officer in charge Sergeant Werner Crous told the Wieambilla inquest he drove from Dalby to Wieambilla after hearing there were two officers down at the rural property of Nathaniel, Gareth and Stacey Train.
Sgt Crous said he developed a plan on the way to assemble a team of four rescuers to enter the property and bring out constables Matthew Arnold and Rachel McCrow, who had been shot, and Constable Keely Brough, who was trapped and on the phone to triple-0.
“I identified that we, as police … would attend the incident address in order to rescue whoever could be rescued, which included Keely Brough, Rachel and Matt,” he said.
“I was told when I arrived there … it was Rachel and Matt that had been shot and that it was Keely, it was unknown where she was but that she was in contact with triple-0.
“I identified that the situation was akin to an armed offender situation and that the matter needed to be resolved as quickly as possible.
“On the way there, I thought that I need four people to form a team and go to where these officers were.
“I didn’t think many more people would put up their hand knowing what the whole (situation) was entailing and it was a deadly thing that was going on.”
Sgt Crous said he decided he would lead people in himself if there weren’t enough volunteers but instead he didn’t only “get four people willing to enter this deadly situation, I got four carloads of people”.
He said many of the officers had rifles and the remaining had Glocks. He said he sent some officers to form roadblocks to contain the scene, while others prepared to enter the property.
When he sent police in to save Constable Brough and the officers who had been shot he said he had “very limited information”.
“Did not know how many offenders there were,” he said.
“We knew there was an address where police were shot. I knew that Alan Dare was dead.
“But we did not know where the offenders were.
“It was my fear that the offenders may become mobile.
“I knew there were people that had been shot.
“I knew that Keely was hiding somewhere in the scrub. I knew that there was a fire lit.”
Sgt Crous said it was clear rifles had been used to target police – because of the distance the shots were coming from – but no one knew what calibres.
He said he set up cordons around the property on nearby roads with officers at around the same time to ensure the Trains could not escape.
Sgt Crous said he heard over the radio that Keely had been rescued and that constables McCrow and Arnold had been picked up by the extraction team.
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