Wieambilla inquest day 3: Alan Dare’s widow Kerry and neighbour Victor Lewis to give evidence
The moment a trio of crazed religious extremists were in a ‘last stand’ shootout with police after murdering two officers and a neighbour in cold blood on their rural property.
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This is the moment crazed religious extremists were in a ‘last stand’ shootout with police after murdering two officers who walked on to their rural property.
Gareth, Nathaniel and Stacey Train lay in wait in sniper hides before they killed constables Matthew Arnold and Rachel McCrow who had tried to go to their home at Wieambilla on the Western Downs.
They also tried to hunt down Constable Randall Kirk, who escaped under gunfire, and Constable Keely Brough who fled after hiding for two hours on the property as they lit fires to flush her out.
Neighbour Alan Dare, 58, was also shot by the Trains after he went to inspect thick black smoke at the property.
A marathon inquest into the murders and the shooting deaths of Nathaniel, Gareth and Stacey Train began in Brisbane 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.
Mr Dare was shot an hour after Nathaniel, Gareth and Stacey Train ambushed a group of four police officers who arrived at their property to conduct a missing persons inquiry.
The inquest has heard the Trains fired from sniper “hides” on December 12, 2022 killing Const Arnold. Const McCrow was murdered minutes later.
Constables Kirk and Brough managed to escape. All three Trains were later killed by specialist police after a lengthy shootout.
The trio - two who were former school principals - then retreated to their house on the large property, ignoring police negotiator attempts as they prepared for a final shootout with police.
In the footage released, Gareth can be seen shooting at police helicopter Polair 1 at 7pm while standing near a Hilux ute.
Fires were still burning around his large property as the shootout with police continued, an inquest into the death of the police officers was told.
During the hours-long incident, Stacey came in and out of the house while Nathaniel lay prone behind a log barricade.
Mid-way through the siege, Stacey emerged from the house carrying two cups that she placed on a table beside the house.
The footage, played to the inquest, shows Gareth joining her and they calmly record a video - later uploaded online - in which they said they had killed the officers who they referred to as “devils and demons”.
The inquest was told the Special Emergency Response Team deployed 19 operatives in four vehicles to the scene, including its heavily armoured BearCat.
Negotiators tried calling six phones linked to the Trains every five minutes but all the phones were off.
A loudspeaker in the BearCat was also used after teams went into the property but attempts to speak with the Trains were either ignored or met with gunfire.
At 9.13pm, the footage shows Gareth shining a hunting light from the Hilux at the BearCat. At the same time, Stacey went back into the house and Nathaniel moved to the table.
The brothers then fired at the BearCat, hitting it, as negotiators tried to speak to them.
Gareth kept firing at the BearCat before moving to a water tank next to the house.
Operatives began returning fire at the Trains, who at 10.13pm were still taking shots at the SERT units, with some of the rounds hitting the vehicles.
The inquest heard Gareth was shot in the head and the hip as he tried to reload, about 14 seconds after he shot at one of the vehicles codenamed Team 3.
Nathaniel fired at the BearCat and Stacey came out of the house and fired her rifle at the vehicle as well.
She re-emerged from the house at 10.36pm and fired another shot.
Stacey was shot in the head, immediately falling, after operatives returned fire.
Nathaniel was shot two minutes later, once in the head, once in the left knee and once in the lower right chest.
MOMENT ALAN DARE GUNNED DOWN
Long-time Wieambilla local Victor Lewis has told the inquest of the moment his neighbour and Good Samaritan Alan Dare suddenly fell to the ground at the hand of the Trains.
Mr Dare was shot dead by one of his neighbours and religious extremists when he arrived at their Wains Rd property to investigate a fire he and Mr Lewis had spotted.
Mr Lewis told the inquest he was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his neighbour watching a car on fire when Mr Dare suddenly fell to the ground.
He said he had no idea his friend had been shot until he rolled him onto his side and saw blood.
Mr Lewis has told how he and Mr Dare went to investigate flames coming from 251 Wains Rd, thinking a house might be on fire.
He said he had previously lost his house to a bushfire and the two men had been worried their properties were at risk.
On arrival at the gates of number 251, they were shocked to find a car on fire.
Mr Lewis said he didn’t realise it was a police car, instead thinking someone had stolen a car and set it alight.
“I didn’t realise Alan was filming,” he said.
“I didn’t go too close because the vehicle was on fire.
“I said to Alan, it’s not the house that’s on fire, it’s a car. Do you want to ring Triple-0?”
He said his friend turned away and was talking about retrieving fire fighting equipment.
“He fell to the ground?” Ms O’Gorman asked.
“Yes,” Mr Lewis said.
“You didn’t know immediately that he’d been shot,” Ms O’Gorman asked.
“Just that he fell,” Mr Lewis replied.
“I knelt down beside him. He said ‘what happened?’. I looked down and he didn’t look good. I didn’t know what was wrong with him.”
Mr Lewis said he rolled his neighbour into the recovery position and “that’s when I saw the blood on his back”.
He said it was clear to him that Mr Dare had been shot.
“Not knowing what was going on … (I decided) it was time to leave there … get away from that,” he said.
Mr Lewis admitted he was “pretty sure” Mr Dare was dead, “but I wasn’t going to pass it on to anybody because I did not know”.
He said he picked up Mr Dare’s phone and crawled back to his quad bike before making his escape.
‘I THINK MY MATE HAS BEEN SHOT’
Mr Lewis said once he got away he rang his wife and told her to call Triple-0 and that he believed Mr Dare had been shot.
He said he inadvertently picked up Mr Dare’s phone.
He said two police vehicles then pulled up on the road.
“When they pulled up … officer in the first car, the driver had got out of the vehicle and was standing there,” Mr Lewis said.
“And I said to him ‘I think my mate’s just been shot’.
Mr Lewis said the police told him there was an active shooter before leaving.
“They just said there is an active shooter and left,” he said.
Mr Lewis said he caught back up with one of the vehicles and spoke to an officer.
“He said ‘active shooter, you’ve got to get out of here,” Mr Lewis told the inquest.
“I drove into Kerry and Alan’s place. I pulled up to try to get Kerry to come with me.
“First thing she saw was Al’s phone in my hand and asked me where Al was.
“I said ‘we’ve got to go’.
“I just said he’s been hurt, I couldn’t say anymore. But she wanted to go down (to see what had happened).
“But I knew something wasn’t right. So I had to convince her to come with me which was hard on me and hard on her.”
They then drove to his house, got his wife and all left through the back of his property and drove to a neighbour behind him whose property fronts Chinchilla-Tara road.
Once they got to safety, Mr Lewis said no one at the command post would provide them with information during the ordeal.
He told the inquest the residents in the area should have been given warnings. “Myself and Alan knew nothing of this. Why were we not advised in some way to stay in our homes?” he said. “They do it anywhere else (with warning systems). “They should have told us to stay in our home, if nothing else.
“This is not a derogatory statement against police. Their job is hard enough. “This is to make things better in the future so something like this doesn’t happen again. That’s all I want.”
HAUNTING TRIPLE-O CALL TO VICTIM’S WIFE
A triple-0 call taker told the wife of Wieambilla victim Alan Dare they should not investigate explosions and black smoke coming from a neighbouring property, saying she “absolutely advised” against it.
The inquest has heard Mr Dare filmed his own death, having taken out his phone to film when he and Mr Lewis discovered a police car on fire at the front gate of the Wains Rd property.
Kerry Dare told the hearing she and Alan were having coffee at a table outside when they heard gunshots.
“I remember hearing up to six single gunshots,” she said.
She said they heard a yelp, which they thought was someone shooting a dog.
”There was what sounded like a semi automatic.
“It was very regular in the area for people to be letting off shots (but) that was the first time I’d heard that (a semiautomatic).”
Mrs Dare said they then heard loud explosions and saw “lots of black smoke”.
“It smelled different. It didn’t smell like grass, no,” she said.
The inquest was played two recordings of a Triple-0 call where Mrs Dare reported hearing shots from a neighbouring property “for the last half hour or so”.
”But there’s been two big bangs in the last ten minutes,” Mrs Dare told the call taker.
”Not gunshots. And now there’s a burning smell and there’s smoke in the air.
”We’re in the bush but it doesn’t smell like grass fire.”
The call taker asks: “In the Wains Rd area?”
Mrs Dare responds: “In the Wains Rd area, yeah.”
On the call, Mrs Dare tells the operator her husband had taken the quad bike to the top of the drive to get a better look.
Mr Dare returns while she is still on the phone.
In the second recording, Mrs Dare tells the operator her husband was about to collect a neighbour to go investigate.
The operator responds: “I am going to absolutely advise against that.”
Mrs Dare told the operator her husband was “just going to the top of the road, to the top of the hill” and wasn’t going too far.
She told the inquest her husband had already left by the time the operator advised them to not go outside. Mrs Dare said the drive to the Trains’ property was only about 600m or two minutes.
“They had gone,” Mrs Dare said.
“She should have done it quicker. He was gone. He got into the car and he left and then she said ‘I advise you not to go’.”
Minutes later Victor Lewis came back to their home, after Alan had been shot.
“He said Al is in a bad way, he threw me the phone and he left again,” Mrs Dare told the inquest.
Mrs Dare said she would “definitely” have told her husband to come back if the Triple-0 operator had told her people had been wounded or shot at the Wains Rd property.
“I would have called my husband to come back or someone should have,” she said.
Mrs Dare said she would have hung up on the operator if she knew.
“Hung up on her and call him,” she said.
Mrs Dare said she was never allowed at the police command during the incident and were on the side of the road, cordoned off “until six o’clock”.
She said she was told her husband had died but otherwise limited information.
“I was not given anything, disgusting and immoral,” Mrs Dare said shaking her head.
Asked outside court if she wanted to make any comment, Mrs Dare said: “Just that I’m happy with the way things went, that’s all.”
Body camera footage released on day two of the inquest showed the four constables McCrow, Arnold, Randall Kirk and Keely Brough walking towards the Train’s property.
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