The heart-pounding moment the SOG raid a suburban Melbourne home
IN THIS extract from the new book Sons Of God, Special Operations Group officers tell how they carried out a tense raid in Melbourne’s south east. WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT
Law & Order
Don't miss out on the headlines from Law & Order. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Warning. this extract contains graphic content
HOMICIDE-squad detectives were on their way to the address to conduct interviews with Mack and Lima, because they had discharged their firearms and killed Cambodian stand-over man Vuthy Tep, who also went by the nicknames ‘Mr T’ and ‘Tiger’. Rayden, the SOG team leader on this particular job, was there to make sure there could be no allegation of collusion between Mack and Lima in any ensuing coronial inquest. ‘You blokes have got nothing to fear,’ Rayden reassured the pair. ‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’
Vuthy Tep had been making a name for himself in the Cambodian community as a violent robber who was quick to use lethal force to get what he wanted. He’d carried out three armed robberies, each an hour apart, with an accomplice, Veth Ouch, the night before the SOG dropped by to pay him a visit at his Doveton address.
During this night of violence, Tep and Ouch robbed a man and his three daughters in Noble Park using a sawn-off .22 rifle, knife and hatchet. They ransacked the family’s home looking for money. Tep fired a number of shots into the ground near the man’s feet before fleeing.
FIRST EXTRACT: THE MOMENT THE SOG COULD HAVE SHOT BRYANT
The duo next terrorised another father after breaking into his home at 2.00 am. Tep and Ouch demanded money, but when the man said he didn’t have any, they stood him up in front of his family and shot him twice – once in the right forearm and once in the left forearm. He was rushed to hospital and was lucky not to have died from the injuries.
In their third and final robbery, Tep shot at a man again, but on this occasion he fired several times, signalling a rise in his aggression and desperation. When Tep missed his intended target and tried to shoot him again, his gun jammed, which enabled the man to defend himself. A brief struggle ensued before Ouch stepped in to stab the man in the shoulder with a knife.
LIMA: The investigators were basically chasing them from house to house as numerous calls came in to police. After talking to the victims and witnesses, they were able to get a clear description of the gun Tep was using in particular, the fact that it was a ‘short weapon with red tape on it’. A couple of the witnesses said that, after each shot, Tep would ‘mess about and fiddle with the gun’. Now that kind of information is important for us because we established that he didn’t have a reliable weapon. For him to shoot, then have to make adjustments to it, shoot and then make adjustments again wasn’t ideal. As it turned out, that tiny snippet of information ended up being critical for us and especially me.
–
Following the spate of violent hold-ups, police tracked Tep and Ouch to a small commission house south-east of Melbourne. Knowing they were armed and extremely dangerous, the officers made a request to their superiors to ask for the SOG to come and make the arrests.
MACK: We headed straight out to the house for a look. There was an unmarked police unit sitting off Tep’s place keeping obs [observation] on him to make sure he didn’t suddenly leave. We did a thorough reconnaissance of the place and took detailed notes. That involved looking at all the streets around the house to identify our ‘form-up point’ – the place we could form up undetected and then begin our walk up to the house for the raid. We looked for spots out front to place our cut-off teams – they can either be inside the yard or outside. If they’re positioned outside the yard, they’ll just jump the fence once the assault team kicks the door in.
–
The SOG rendezvoused at the local police station and presented all the information they’d obtained from the reconnaissance to their superior officers, and a plan of attack was then formulated and subsequently agreed on.
The SOG considered sending in a police dog initially, but because there were a number of people inside, the dog would not have been able to identify Tep or Ouch, or distinguish friend from foe. Tear gas was also rejected as an option, as was a ‘call and contain’ scenario where police would order Tep to come out and surrender.
OSCAR: The number of innocent people inside was problematic. Letting him know we were there would have enabled him to grab a hostage and use them as leverage. A forced-entry raid was the best option, given the information and circumstances. We had to use superior numbers, speed and the element of surprise to try and grab Tep and Ouch before they could access any firearms. We had been told that Tep kept one firearm under his pillow, one in a couch and another in his car. I told the men who were going into the house to maintain firearms discipline, to watch for any knives and to remember their training at all times.
–
Just before dawn the next morning, a five-man SOG assault team formed up a few blocks away from where Tep and Ouch were staying.
LIMA: It was a day job, and we f---ing hate day jobs because the chances of being burnt are so much higher. The risks are so much greater than night jobs.
–
At the form-up point, each member of the assault team made sure their kit was in order and carried out final weapons checks.
LIMA: At that point, we will eyeball each other and make sure everyone is ready to go. It’s a matter of looking at each member in the team and asking them, ‘Are you good?’ and getting that all-important nod from them. Then we radio through to the boss at the command post and advise him, ‘We’re at the form-up point and ready to advance to the move-off point.’
–
The move-off point is the closest position the Soggies can possibly get to the target address without being ‘burnt’ or seen by the offender. It might be a brick wall or on the other side of the fence of a neighbouring property. The move-off point is where they gather for the final time.
LIMA: At that stage, you take a big, deep breath, get yourself settled and wait for the final guy to join the end of the line or stack. Once everyone is settled, in order of march, the last man in the line will squeeze or tap the man in front, and that will start a domino effect. Each man squeezes or taps the man in front of him to signal, ‘I’m ready.’ This happens until the man at the front of the queue gets the final squeeze or tap. If the lead man doesn’t get a tap, he just waits until he does. He can’t afford to look over his shoulder or behind and take his eyes off what’s ahead, because he’s responsible for covering the team and eliminating any threats. He’s one hundred per cent focused forwards at all times. The front man is the cover man for the line and then becomes the cut-off man. He will peel away from the front of the line when we narrow in on the house. There’s also a cut-off team at the back of the house, and each cut-off will have a designated side of the house to watch: ‘black’ being the back, ‘white’ the front, ‘green’ the left side and ‘red’ the right side. A secondary entry point was always established in case there were any issues with the primary entry point.
–
With their firearms at the ready, the black-clad Soggies formed a single file and began a slow but steady march towards the house. Stepping in unison, they increased their pace gradually as they neared the entrance. Only a sudden call to ‘Stand down!’ from the inspector at the command post could stop them now.
LIMA: The move-off point is the last stage that anyone can make the call to ‘stand down’. If the boss has given us the green light to ‘Go!’, he can’t suddenly change his mind and radio to us ‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’ because it’s too late. We’re already out and we’re vulnerable. We’ve got momentum and we are punching in. The minute we step away from the move-off point, we are committed to the job. There have been many instances where we’ve advanced to the move-up point but have then been ordered to drop back to the form-up point because something has happened and the circumstances have changed.
–
In a standard stack of five assaulters, the lead man is focused only on the entry point. The second man is backing up the lead man, and the third and fourth have to cover to the left and right flanks. The last man in the line has to cover to the rear and must keep looking back at 180 degrees for any danger or threats. Depending on the complexity of the job and the roles required, the number of Soggies in the assault team can vary. The most sought-after position of ‘No. 1’ entry man could be fourth or fifth in the line to begin with, because all the men ahead of him will peel off during the march up. When the cut-off man peels away from the head of the line to take up his position at the front of the house, the next man in the line then takes over as the cover man.
The entry man had to show no hesitation, and go in no matter what. The difference would be when there was an initial burst of gunfire coming from the room before entering or upon entering; there, the SOG member would be forced into an instinctive action of self-preservation and would need to assess the situation and re-evaluate his approach. But for a standard breach, you had to kick the door in and follow the momentum through, into the room.
LIMA: Everyone has their area of responsibility and that’s it. The No. 1 entry man must always be the sharpest and best operator available. You want him to be ‘the man’ and someone everyone trusts. We are trained not to baulk – meaning not to hesitate to go into a room when we are the first in. The thing is about the jobs we do – when we have control – is that they’re done at a time when people are in the deepest sleep and at their most vulnerable. We act swiftly and with a lot of aggression. If there was a situation (and thankfully there hasn’t been) where someone hesitated or ‘baulked’, everyone’s life would then be put at risk. You can’t get to a door and stutter-step – it’s too late; you’ve lost all the momentum and the crook now has an opportunity.
All a crook needs is a split second and they’ll seize the initia- tive from us. It can be the tiniest opportunity and they’ll grab it – you never know what they’re thinking. They could go for a gun, a knife or even jump out a window and escape – anything. They’re creatures of opportunity and they’ll take the upper hand if you baulk at a doorway or hesitate. The flow-on effect is enormous when one man doesn’t perform his task because it impacts on the rest of the team. You have to make sure the blokes on that entry team are the best of the best. If someone had a tendency to hesitate, we would make sure we found that out about them during the selection and intake process, not when they were on a real-life job.
Just before they stepped onto the front porch, the men activated the light systems on their guns to illuminate their path to their target and were surprised to see that the front door was wide open.
MACK: The tension really starts to grab hold of you at that point. You just zero in on that entry. Once we hit the fence line of his property, there was no stopping us. We all knew what each other was expected to do. We had to go in hard, we had to go in fast, and with clear heads.
LIMA: You go into the zone. There are no more distractions. You have an environmental awareness – so you’ll see if a curtain moves in a window at the front, for example, but outside of those things you have to be focused and calm. The fact that the door was wide open meant we didn’t have to set up there; it was instant access, which was fortunate because of it being a daylight job. The less time we spend idle in one spot in daylight, the better. With a closed door, you have to walk up, set up on either side and you would also need an MOE [method of entry] man with a sledgehammer or a ram or whatever.
RAYDEN: We thought we’d have to break the door down, but instead we just strolled right on in. It was pretty unusual.
–
Rayden (the No. 1) and his cover man Dane headed inside and continued straight ahead down the hallway. Mack was next in, with Lima following him to the left.
LIMA: It was a sh---y old house. People were everywhere, sharing hot beds, and there were clearly a few different families residing there. The kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it and the entire joint was filthy. We entered the lounge room through a sliding door and the TV was playing the old children’s show with Humphrey B. Bear. Two little kids were sitting there watching it, and a man and a woman – presumably their parents – were sitting on the couch behind them. They were tiny little kids and they were screaming, because we were yelling, ‘Police! Don’t move!’
We allowed the mum to hold the kids to her, because we quickly established that the adults weren’t who we were looking for and weren’t a threat. The older man certainly knew what was going on, and he threw his hands in the air straight away and didn’t want anything to do with us. They had two guns pointed at them and were told in no uncertain terms, ‘Don’t move – stay there!’ It was sad that the kids were put in that situation, horrible, but it wasn’t our doing. The family allowed Tep and Ouch into that house and obviously knew them. Whether they were related or not, I’m not sure, but it was their choice to keep their company, knowing they were pieces of sh-t. It was a situation of their own making and the kids were young enough to get over it – they were only toddlers.
MACK: As we were checking them for weapons, Rayden and Dane were clearing the rest of the house and had found several other innocent occupants, including some more young children. I called for Bulldog to leave his cut-off position in the front yard and join us inside to watch over the group that we had just arrested.
–
Mack had the family under control, and Lima moved behind him and then to his side at about ninety degrees to provide cover. That angle provided solid and safe arcs of fire and eliminated any risk of crossfire.
LIMA: One of our biggest fears is police accidentally shooting police. It wasn’t until I moved to Mack’s flank that I realised I was standing in front of another door. It was to my left and was slightly ajar. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw some movement through the crack and a flash of black and immediately thought it was Rayden and Dane coming around, having cleared the rest of the house. I thought they’d gone up the hallway and were sweeping back towards us.
–
With his handgun in his left hand (being a left-hander), Lima reached across his body with his right hand and pushed at the door to open it wider. He wanted to let Rayden and Dane know that he was on the other side and that he and Mack had the lounge room covered.
LIMA: When I pushed the door, it opened up and then slammed back hard on me. I knew immediately, ‘I have to go into that room – that’s not my team in there and it needs clearing.’ I yelled to Mack, ‘Closed door! Closed door!’ I squared up to the door this time and grabbed the handle with my right hand. As I turned it and cracked the lock [released the catch on the door], I kicked the door with my right foot high up, and it flew open but didn’t go all the way.
–
With something stopping the door from swinging all the way open and only a small gap to squeeze through, Lima entered the room with his gun down and pointed at the floor.
LIMA: The room was tiny – only about eight by eight feet. As soon as I went in, I noticed all this sh-t everywhere, like rubbish and paper. There was a mattress on the floor in the far left corner. I saw that the room was clear in front of me so I then pivoted to my left to look behind the door. I still had my handgun down and turned to find Tep standing on an old sofa with his rifle up in the shooting position aimed directly at me. His arms were fully outstretched, so the barrel of his gun was just inches from my neck. I yelled, ‘Police! Don’t move!’ and then tightened my neck muscles because he was aiming just above my ballistic vest, right at my voice box. I don’t know why I tensed up; I can only assume that I was bracing because I was waiting for a round to hit me in the throat.
–
Having heard the commotion in the lounge room, Tep was ready and waiting for the SOG to storm in to the bedroom he was in. He had started pulling the trigger on his sawn-off Ruger .22 at his first glimpse of Lima, but instead of letting off a loud ‘POP!’ his gun only produced a measly ‘click’ each time he tried to fire it. Just like in his previous crimes, the weapon had failed on him yet again.
Lima’s weapon was fully functional, and he had no trouble defending himself. By the time Mack entered, Lima was backing away and had already put multiple rounds into Tep with his 9-mm handgun.
LIMA: They call it ‘vertical tracking’ when you shoot someone low on their body and move your shots upwards. I fired nine rounds at Tep from his legs and groin area working my way up to his upper torso, as I was retreating towards the back of the room. At that stage, I became aware of Mack coming around the door.
–
Despite being on the end of Lima’s stream of bullets, Tep showed no sign of being shot and was still actively trying to shoot back.
MACK: When I came into the room, I saw Lima firing, but Tep wasn’t going down. Everything just happened so damned quick. Tep’s finger was on the trigger and he was trying to pull it but nothing was happening. He was making the motions as if to say, ‘What the hell is wrong with this f---ng gun?’ He was confused as to why it wasn’t working and there’s no doubt in the world that he was trying to kill Lima.
LIMA: Tep’s facial expressions didn’t change despite the fact I was shooting him. His eyes were locked in on me with the most intense stare and his gun was up as I was firing. I would have thought there would be some sort of facial change as he was being hit, but there wasn’t anything noticeable. Because he was wearing black clothing, I also couldn’t see if my rounds were hitting him or where they were impacting. I started to doubt my accuracy, and then I had a sinking feeling.
–
It suddenly dawned on Lima that he may have forgotten to swap out the non-lethal rounds the SOG was using during a recent national exercise at the police academy with the SAS. Lima and Mack had been involved in the training and were summoned directly from the academy to help with the arrests of Tep and Ouch.
LIMA: I thought, ‘I’ve still got those f---ing blanks in my gun!’ We all de-bombed our live ammo when we arrived to start the exercise and bombed-up with FX-rounds, but then got called out and had to repeat the process in reverse. I had no idea if I was hitting Tep or not and assumed there was something wrong, even though I was sure I’d changed them from blanks. I thought, ‘I’ve got blanks! He’s gonna kill Mack!’
–
Seeing that Lima was directly in Tep’s firing line and in grave danger, Mack fired a single shot from the right-hand-side with his shotgun. WHOOMPF! Nine lead ball bearings exploded out of their cartridge and blew a hole in Tep’s shoulder before ripping through his chest cavity and into his lungs. Mack’s close proximity to Tep meant maximum damage was inflicted.
MACK: If you’re being shot at with a shotty, the closer you are to the gun, the worse it’s going to be for you. The grouping of pellets will be tighter as they haven’t had a chance to spread apart through the air over distance. They’re still travelling as a solid mass. So, for Tep, he was hit with one big slug. My shot went in through his shoulder, took out his spine and the pellets lodged in his lungs. It’s a lot of damage at such close range. I shot because Tep still had the gun in his hand and he was still a threat to us, although Lima had already put rounds into him. If Tep’s gun had started working, Lima was dead.
When you go into a room like that, it’s not as if you are twenty metres apart from each other. This room in particular was very, very small and we were very confined. I would have only been one metre from Tep and two metres away from Lima. The decision to shoot at someone is something you don’t take lightly, but one you have to make very quickly. If you’ve decided to shoot, you’re not trying to wound them. It’s life or death, and if you pull that trigger, it’s a decision you’ve made to remove a threat. If there’s a person pointing a firearm at you or bearing down on you with a knife, he’s trying to take your life and you must stop that momentum. To shoot to injure, it’s a very hard thing to do. It looks good in the movies when they shoot people in the arm or the leg, but that’s not necessarily going to stop any momentum of a person coming forwards. If the threat continues, we are trained to stop the threat, and that means shooting to kill.
–
Tep finally went down after Mack’s intervention, and, soon after the shooting ceased, Dane and Rayden arrived.
DANE: I came into the room just after Mack but it was all over. Tep wasn’t taken by surprise, because he’d heard us clearing the rest of the house. He made a conscious decision to shoot at Lima when he entered that room. Usually, he wouldn’t have hadthat choice, but because we’d missed that room, the element of surprise had been lost. These people are not kung-fu artists and don’t usually react in a split second by grabbing a flick knife and throwing it at us when we crash in. It’s always someone standing there waiting for us or where they’ve heard us coming. Tep was still alive for a while, but you can imagine the amount of damage a shotgun would do at close range, being shot sideways through your lungs and chest. I think he bled to death.
RAYDEN: We had cleared the other parts of the house and then heard CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
Then a thunderous WHOOOMPF! I pushed my way into the room and Tep was lying there just looking at me, dying, going ‘Arrggghhhhhhh.’ I could see this massive hole in his side and I thought Lima had hit him several times in the same spot with his 9 mm.
The one thing that stood out the most on Tep’s firearm was the red tape he had wrapped around the barrel and magazines. He’d taped two mags together end to end, which usually enables a quick reload. It showed that he meant business, but he never got a shot away.
–
Cowering in the corner of the room, jammed between the door and the couch, Tep’s partner in crime, Ouch, could only watch on in horror.
MACK: He was packing death. We hadn’t even realised he was in the room. When we told him to move out from beside the couch, he was frozen with fear . . . petrified. We had to physically reach in and pull him out and onto the ground.
LIMA: I became aware of Ouch’s presence long after Tep went down because all my senses completely shut down during the shooting. I couldn’t hear anything, I couldn’t smell anything – it’s a physiological effect that occurs involuntarily when you’re in survival mode. Your eyes are critical to your survival and all your other senses get blocked out. You have to be able to see what the threat is, where the threat is and then act. When things settle and the threat has been negated, that’s when your other senses start to return and things start to open up again. Once that door swung open, Ouch would have just curled up into a ball when all the shooting started. He didn’t want to get involved, which was a good thing for him.
RAYDEN: He tried to slip between the cracks in the floorboards, I reckon.
–
Paramedics arrived on the scene and worked frantically to save Tep, but their efforts were in vain. Lima wasn’t faring well either, although he wasn’t injured.
LIMA: I just lost my cool after a brush with death and my emotions boiled over immediately after.
When Oscar arrived on the scene, he ordered me to go outside to cool down. After I had regained my composure, my thoughts were more sympathetic towards Tep: ‘You f---ing idiot . . . why did you do that? You didn’t have to do that, mate.’
This is an extract from SONS OF GOD by Heath O’Loughlin. Available now, Macmillan Australia, RRP $34.99. http://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781743539378/
Buy Sons Of God by Heath O’Loughlin for special reader price of $28.99 including delivery. Order online at heraldsun.com.au or call 1300 306 107.
–