Penrith shooting: Daniel King shot dead outside police station
A gym junkie shot dead after a shooting rampage across western Sydney last night was well known to police but had a clean criminal record. Daniel King did not hold a gun licence and had bikie contacts. WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
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The pregnant mother whose house was blasted by a gym junkie gunman later shot dead in a violent firefight with cops at Penrith Police Station was warned he had paid someone to kill her.
Stacey Taylor’s ex-lover Daniel King told a female associate he had “made a payment to have her (Ms Taylor) stomped”.
The woman had warned Ms Taylor and her mother Mandy in a series of extraordinary texts in the lead-up to Wednesday night’s shooting rampage at Ms Taylor’s home and at St Marys and Penrith police stations.
King was eventually gunned down by police in High St, Penrith, at 9.35pm with posts on the 32-year-old’s Instagram account hours before the rampage revealing a haunting farewell and his ‘death wish’ vow that “A COWARD DIES A THOUSAND DEATHS, A SOLDIER DIES BUT ONCE”.
In the text messages, the woman warned King against attacking Ms Taylor, a mother-of-three who is 27 weeks pregnant with his child.
Ms Taylor was told the hit was “going down in the next two weeks”.
“It was ages ago and they have just took his money,” the chilling messages read.
“Yea (sic) I was with him when he was stalking her trying to find the route when this guy was going to knock her.”
Mandy responded: “Sorry I am of (sic) to the police.”
King and the woman also allegedly discussed how to kill the unborn baby in a separate text conversation.
“It’s a real baby now hey you know that?” she wrote to him.
“Like you’ll have to kill her. She won’t just bleed. She would have a still born and have to give birth to a dead baby.
“You’ll have to have her stabbed in the gut that’s the only way and you won’t do that.”
Bizarrely, Mandy said it was the woman herself who sent screenshots of her own conversations with King to her as a warning.
Stacey said she rang triple-0 to report the threats and police visited her Marayong home. They later rang, she said, to inform her the texts were insufficient evidence to warrant an apprehended violence order because they were not directly from 32-year-old King.
In another message on August 1 the woman explains how Stacey was stalked by King.
“About a month ago maybe 2 now does Stacey remember a white SUV stalking her taking the kids to school and back? Apparently she was looking right at the car but didn’t recognise,” the woman wrote.
“Just make sure she has moved. If she wants to keep that child keep her away from your house.”
King had directly sent Stacey threats demanding a DNA test and an abortion after she told him she was pregnant with his child.
She was inside with her parents and three children when King blasted more shots through the front of the house on Wednesday.
The pair were estranged in recent months.
“I haven’t seen or heard from him in seven months,” Ms Taylor said
“He was actually sending me threats for about two to three weeks after I told him I was pregnant, accusing me that it wasn’t his baby, that he wanted DNA testing, that he would go to DOCS o get me in trouble to get an abortion.
“If I didn’t he was going to kill himself, so a lot of threats, even getting his parents to ring me up to try to make me go and meet up with him.”
She said she had known King since they were children and briefly dated before she realised she was pregnant.
“I don’t really know him much since primary school, I knew him since I was about seven, we were speaking for a while, went on a couple of dates,” she said.
Police shot King dead when he opened fire on officers with a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun outside Penrith Police Station on Wednesday night — hitting one officer in the back of the head.
Sources at Westmead Hospital today said the injured officer was in a stable condition and had been moved from the Emergency Department into a ward.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal King did not hold a gun licence and as part of their investigations into the shooting rampage, homicide detectives are looking at how he obtained the pump-action shotgun.
It is legal to buy them in Australia for as little as $400 but only with a licence, while sources said a gun on the black market could cost several thousands.
King was known to have many bikie contacts and outlaw motorcycle gangs are a well-known source of illegal firearms.
Investigators are also looking at whether the gun was stolen.
Pump-action shotguns with a magazine capacity of no more than five rounds can be owned with a limited Category C licence and pump action shotguns with a magazine capacity of more than five rounds are only available to professional shooters or farmers to control vertebrate pests including birds and animals that damage crops.
It is understood King had a clean criminal record although he was well-known to police through intelligence sources.
King’s grieving father Peter and father-in-law Alf arrived at King’s home in Claremont Meadow, near Penrith, today to collect some belongings.
Alf questioned why police had shot King so many times.
“There’s got to be an inquiry into that … it doesn’t take 20 bullets to put a person down,” he said.
“He’s a top person, do anything for anyone.”
The terrifying rampage began at Ms Taylor’s Quakers Rd, Marayong home about 8.45pm before King travelled to nearby St Marys, spraying bullets at the local police station 30 minutes later.
He was then seen getting out of a car on High St in Penrith with the shotgun slung over his shoulder before walking calmly towards Penrith Police Station and shooting at the building.
Uniformed police fired back, killing King who was seen on witness footage falling to the ground, ending the ordeal.
One police officer was treated at the scene for pellet wounds to the back of the head and was taken to Westmead Hospital in a stable condition. Doctors are determining whether surgery is required to remove the shotgun pellet.
Two other officers at Westmead told The Daily Telegraph the injured officer was “recovering well and seems fine”.
Several other officers were treated at the scene for non gunshot-related injuries.
Video filmed by a young woman shows the gunman in a dark T-shirt and pants advancing towards police with his weapon drawn. As the man raises a gun and fires at police a woman is heard screaming: “He is shooting the police! Let’s go, I am scared.”
A volley of shots is heard and the man momentarily stays on his feet before collapsing to the ground. He appeared to raise his head before officers opened fire again.
Two uniformed officers can then be seen approaching from the police station and they appear to fire at the prone gunman multiple times. The girls filming were left crying.
“I’m telling you this is happening, this is unfolding in front of my eyes,” one cried.
She kept repeating, “Oh my God, oh my God,” before the recording ended.
A close friend of King said the 32-year-old was a child of a single parent and grew up in a housing commission with dreams of playing rugby league for Penrith.
The friend also claimed King had been eyeballed by outlaw motorcycle gangs for his intimidating size and presence — but never wanted to join.
“They wanted him, he’d be handy,” his friend said.
“He wasn’t scared of anyone. But no way he had links, he never wanted to be one of them and he had plenty of good mates from growing up.”
Terrified drinkers in the Australian Arms pub on High St, near the police station, were placed into lockdown.
A shocked pub worker described the moment he saw the man, dressed in a black tracksuit, walk calmly down the main street with the shotgun slung over his shoulder.
Mick Lumptin, 48, was hosting the local trivia night at the pub when someone said there was a man outside the street with a gun.
He said the man got out of a white Hyundai 4WD and started walking up the street.
“We saw the guy literally walk up the street with a gun, so I am like ‘really?’
“(He was) just walking, nice and calm, he wasn’t angry, he was relaxed.
“When he jumped out of his car, the shotgun was down by his side and when he got to the police station he pulled it up over his shoulder.
“As he pulled it over his shoulder, the police pulled up.
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“It wasn’t long after that the police came around the corner (in a car) and the police yelled out put your firearm down, or something along those lines.
“From then there were just gunshots. I don’t know how many, maybe 15.
“I remember seeing him point the gun at the police car and shoot.”
The trivia master then returned to the pub shaken up but said they dealt with the incident in a typical Aussie fashion.
“We actually all went back to the pub and someone put on Who Shot The Sheriff. We all had a beer singing that,” he said.
The injured police officer is expected to make a full recovery.
Aaron Dawson, 30, was a block away when the shooting happened.
“I was there just chilling and then next thing I hear is a few gunshots go off,” he said.
“I thought it might have just been fireworks but then I heard police sirens, then I had a bit of a closer look and then next minute bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
“I thought that’s not normal so I wandered up here to the cop shop and there is a bloke on the ground dead.
“He looked like he was wearing an Adidas hoodie and a shotty (shotgun) over his shoulder.”
Kiesha Goolagong-King, 18, heard gunshots while she was on her way to McDonalds.
“We heard gunshots when we were walking and then we started running … and then we were just watching,” she said.
Matt Dawson, 60, was competing in trivia at the Australian Arms when they heard the gunman.
“We heard two shots when we were sitting in the pub,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
“Then we started walking out to see what happened then I started to hear a pop pop pop — a real familiar sound.
“We walked out to see what happened before the police stopped up.”
Matt moved from Florida to Australia in 2012 and was shocked that a shooting would happen in Penrith.
“One of the best things about living in Australia is the mateship. If you’re a half decent person you’ll be looked after,” he said.
“That’s what I found out last night. Everyone was looking out for each other.”
Police locked down the areas outside the two police stations.
The Police Association sent members to the scene to assist officers injured and to support the police who had shot the offender.