One year since Bourke St tragedy that killed six people in Melbourne CBD

IT’S a year since a disturbed, angry and violent driver of a car hurtled up Bourke St, killing six and inflicting terrible injuries. Andrew Rule charts the deadly rampage.

WE call it “Bourke St”, short for the worst massacre on mainland Australia in the 30 years since the Queen St and Hoddle St shootings in 1987.

Eleven days before it happened, a Facebook post allegedly written by Dimitrious “James” Gargasoulas boasted: “I’ll take you all out just me you need a (sic) army to take me and so far you have presented half a army.”

POLICE UNION DEMANDS ACTION ON CBD PURSUIT POLICY

BOURKE ST CASE BACK ON TRACK AFTER JUDGE’S SPRAY

A court will eventually decide on the guilt or innocence — and the mental state — of the man charged with six deaths and terrible injuries inflicted during the rampage on that Friday, one year ago next week.

Until then, not much can be said about him.

Dimitrious Gargasoulas will front court next week.

We can say that when he appeared by video link in court recently, he was bloated and bearded, in contrast to the lean, agitated and wild-eyed driver shot and arrested on January 20 last year.

So where does it start, the story of an erratic young man that ended in random death and terrible injuries to so many?

Six days before the carnage, police took a man they knew well to St Kilda police station to help with inquiries about a stolen car.

What happened that day and since will be of much interest in the future trial, as lawyers unravel the tangled tale of the countdown to mayhem.

But the story of the disturbed young man goes back further than that week.

Dimitrious Gargasoulas was shot and arrested in Bourke St Mall on January 20. Picture: Tony Gough

The Gargasoulas brothers came from a broken family — they had lived with their father in outback South Australia before coming to Melbourne, where their mother lived, as teenagers in 2006. It was a chaotic life.

A month before the Bourke St carnage, James Gargasoulas’ brother Angelo was charged with assaulting their mother and smashing plates while under the influence of ice.

His lawyer said Angelo had thrown a heavy flask into his mother’s face, cutting her, because she had criticised his sexuality while she was drunk.

I’LL NEVER FORGET BOURKE ST: YOUNG AMBO

He had also bashed his boyfriend with the butt of a box cutter — reason unknown.

The court heard he repeatedly drove unlicensed, drunk and drugged — in late 2015 he robbed a taxi driver of $3000 and a month later tested positive to drug driving in Footscray.

He was later caught with a stolen car.

Police knew the brothers. One of their aunts was a regular visitor at inner suburban police stations.

Police were familiar with Dimitrious Gargasoulas before the Bourke St rampage. Picture: David Caird

The Bourke St victims.

James had been investigated for alleged mail theft and setting up false bank accounts to commit frauds.

He liked the gym and the casino and taking risks — he once broke his ankle when he jumped off a balcony.

“I never thought he’d do anything like that (Bourke St),” a police source told the Herald Sun.

“He was like a cunning big kid. He’s not a complete idiot.”

But by the new year of 2017, it seemed “the cunning big kid” was getting erratic.

He had become obsessed about a particular St Kilda detective and thought police wanted to shoot him.

When he was questioned on January 14 — six days before the carnage — he allegedly told authorities he was a police informer.

No one could have guessed that within a week every police officer in the nation would know his name.

THE PURSUIT THAT WASN’T

NO one knows what was in the mind of whoever drove the car that caused the Bourke St carnage. But James Gargasoulas’s brother was allegedly attacked early on January 20.

It happened around 2am — the time, say police and ambulance officers, when most bad things happen. Angelo Gargasoulas had his arm and the back of his head slashed.

DANIEL ANDREWS: VICTORIANS STRONGER THAN EVIL, CRIMINAL ACT

“This guy was holding this huge kitchen knife and started slashing at the windows and went after this guy,” Windsor resident Jess Bergin said. “He was just hacking at this guy … it was absolutely brutal.”

The incident drew media attention. A Nine Network reporter was doing a live cross to the studio that morning when a maroon Holden Commodore pulled up behind her and the driver gestured at the camera.

The string of events began with an alleged attack in Windsor. Picture: Chris Eastman

No one realised then what was to follow: the bizarre “chase” that would end in Bourke St six hours later.

Soon after, James Gargasoulas’s sometime girlfriend was picked up in a maroon car and driven around the Prahran area.

A detective saw the wanted Commodore in Punt Rd and followed. It stopped at the corner of Toorak Rd and Chapel St but because the alleged driver was not considered a danger to the public, police were unwilling to ram the car the way they would once have done.

If they had rammed it and it had smashed other cars or injured a pedestrian they would have copped trouble for breaching police pursuit policy. Instead, they played follow-the-leader with the Commodore as it headed towards South Melbourne.

They tried to intercept it in Moray St but it sped away. Again, it seemed too risky to try to stop it forcibly because of the risk to the public. The car headed towards Docklands and the woman got out of it under the freeway overpass.

Police had another chance to box in the car but it drove off before they could make a decision.

They hoped the driver could be persuaded to pull over.

The Commodore was next sighted in Yarraville, where a concerned onlooker approached the driver because he was chanting. Police started talking to a man they believed to be the driver on his mobile, asking him to meet them.

The man police were speaking with implied he was on the verge of giving himself up — that he would come quietly but needed “time to think”. But when the police helicopter flew overhead he allegedly became agitated and paranoid and drove off.

He crossed the Westgate Bridge and turned on to Williamstown Rd to approach the city. Police followed him, intermittently talking on his mobile, asking him to stop.

They suggested he pull up in Port Melbourne but he would not commit to it. Up to that point, police say, “it was just another job”, the sort of thing they do every week.

BRAVE BOURKE ST CABBIE RECOGNISED

Armed police were forced to hang back as the car did circles at one of Melbourne’s busiest intersections. Picture: Tony Gough

It all changed when the car moved down Flinders St towards the crowd gathered for a homelessness protest. The police dropped back because so many people were crowded on the landmark railway station corner.

When the car drove in circles around the intersection, some protesters assumed it was a show of support. People in the crowd cheered and stuck their fingers up at police, who positioned their cars between the circling car and the crowd in case the driver lost control.

As the police hung back, a burly motorist stepped out of a car with a baseball bat. He couldn’t reach the driver because the latter was driving the car in a clockwise circle, putting himself inside the arc, out of reach of the batter.

There were armed police present with batons and capsicum spray — and tasers, presumably — but the risk of the driver losing control and hurting people in the crowd seemed too great.

When he turned into Swanston St and drove slowly, at first, the police relaxed a little, thinking he would take the straight run out of the city.

Then it seemed he wanted to turn into Little Collins but was blocked by bollards. It was as if that tiny frustration triggered rage in him.

The car drove along the footpath and turned into the Bourke St mall. It had started.

The Commodore hit a pedestrian but, strangely, seemed to dodge a wheelchair and sped down the mall.

Police driving close behind hit their sirens to warn of the danger. But it was too late. All the what-ifs, maybes and missed chances of the previous hours had turned into mayhem.

DEATH BY CAR

BY the time pedestrians could react to the sirens and screams, the Commodore was mowing them down.

One officer saw so many bodies tossed in the air, he was sure dozens of people would die. The pursuing police desperately tried not to run over them as they tried to cut off the killer.

Many people reacted fast, some heroically. Flight Centre manager Charlotte Galpin sprinted across the street as soon as she heard the screaming and saw the broken bodies.

A police officer was convinced there would be dozens of deaths after witnessing the horrific incident. Picture: Alex Coppel

Onlookers came to the rescue of the wounded in the immediate aftermath. Picture: Luke Costin

She saw a young mother hit by the swerving car. She and Phoebe Hammond ran to help Chris Lassig — the first to reach the injured woman, Nethra Krishnamurthy, whose husband was shouting she was dead. They put Nethra into a recovery position and waited for paramedics, Charlotte cradling her bleeding head for what seemed like ages. The wounds were so bad, Charlotte didn’t expect her to make it. But she did.

Meanwhile, wealth management expert Marc Richardson was with a badly injured woman who revealed she was 14 weeks pregnant.

Much later, she would thank him for “saving my baby”. She had a broken pelvis and other injuries and would spend eight weeks in hospital. Two weeks after that she delivered a tiny premature son at 24 weeks. The baby survived — and got the middle name of Marc.

The wrecked car was surrounded by police and emergency services on the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth streets.

Witnesses tended to the injured while waiting for paramedics to arrive.

COUNTDOWN ON FOR NOTORIOUS CBD BLACK SPOT

Young lawyer Henry Dow had left a meeting early. When he saw the red car career past, for a split-second he thought a girl thrown in the air was “joy-riding”.

Then his surf lifesaving training kicked in and he ran to help. He did whatever heroically calm cabbie Lou Bougias told him to do.

When Dow heard shots fired up the hill near William St, he thought it was the Commodore driver, still running amok. In fact, it was the police, stopping him just a few minutes late.

A little girl’s body was under a blanket. Her father was on his hands and knees, forehead touching the ground, praying, as armed police stood nearby.

The image that stuck in so many minds was that of the mangled pram caught underneath the Commodore. The car had mounted the footpath and knocked over the pram and the mother pushing it.

A wrecked pram lay on the street in the aftermath. Picture: AAP Image/Julian Smith

Paramedics were shocked by the carnage. Picture: David Geraghty, The Australian.

Witnesses saw a baby fly into the air.

The Commodore then zigzagged along Bourke St and hit three more men just before police shot the driver.

Paramedic Jess Read was supposed to be an observer that day, the last shift of her three-week induction before officially starting work. But by late that afternoon, she had seen more dead and injured in one place than most paramedics do in their entire careers. She hopes never to see it again.

“There was so much noise and chaos and members of the public,” she said yesterday. “People who had probably never seen blood or broken bones before were just doing whatever they could.”

At times like these, we see the best and worst of human nature.

THE AFTERMATH

FIRST shock, then anger, then grief.

The shock has faded. The anger has not, but it has been bottled up. And for those who lost loved ones to death or serious injury, the grief is endless.

Then there’s the crippling mixture of all three of those emotions that we label post-traumatic stress. Even those who survive physically can find themselves damaged forever. The untold story of Bourke St is how many lives have been blighted by 60 seconds of madness.

Such events transcend party politics but not for long.

Premier Daniel Andrews was at Portland for a jobs announcement at the Alcoa smelter that day when he got the breaking news at 2pm.

When he landed at Moorabbin an hour later, he heard the toll of dead and injured. Then he was told that the alleged offender was on bail.

Bourke St was blanketed with flowers in tribute to massacre victims. Picture: David Crosling

The city corner was a sea of flowers. Picture: Nicole Garmston

BOURKE ST HERO HOLDS ‘LITTLE MIRACLE’

“My first thoughts were … how was that possible?” the Premier recalled.

At the media conference at police headquarters an hour later, he said: “Our hearts are breaking this afternoon that a number of people have died, and some remain in a critical condition. We can be confident we are stronger than this evil criminal act.”

It wasn’t long before the politics kicked in: the Government introduced a Night Court to push responsibility for out-of-hours bail applications from bail justices to magistrates; it ordered temporary bollards across the city and a “comprehensive review” of bail.

Today the Premier said: “Even on one of our darkest days, we still saw the very best of Victorians. We won’t be defined by this tragedy — we are stronger than that.”

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull laid flowers at the public memorial site. Picture: David Crosling

Fine rhetoric aside, senior police, politicians and bureaucrats are still wrestling with the aftermath of an event that underlines how vulnerable an open society is to murder by motor vehicle.

Not all of the soul-searching and second-guessing has been public. The internal Victoria Police review into the actions of its staff might be given to the Coroner when an inquest is finally ready to go, but, until then, it is being kept secret.

Regardless of night courts, bail is still a festering issue because of the sheer pressure of numbers. Repeat offenders such as the alleged driver in this case can be granted bail either by mistake, in breach of guidelines, or in opaque circumstances.

KINSHIP FORGED IN CHAOS OF BOURKE ST TRAGEDY

Thalia Hakin, 10, was one of the youngest victims of the Bourke St tragedy. Picture: David Crosling

“Amateur” bail justices were pilloried after Bourke St but the figures show they were not the “soft touches” many professional magistrates are.

Another problem is that of police pursuits that span a wide area — in this case, three police districts under separate command.

Meanwhile, working police are unhappy with a pursuit policy which, they argue, encourages offenders to speed to escape detection because they know they won’t be chased. With some pursuits, backing off is the right decision — for others, doing nothing creates other risks.

One thing is clear: unless police are indemnified many will be unwilling to risk their careers, let alone their safety, in high-speed chases and potential shootouts.

In the end, what happened in Bourke St tells us that some things are almost impossible to avoid. And the price we pay for a slow-pursuit, don’t-shoot policy is a police force that does exactly that.

A case of be careful what you wish for.

[e-mail]