Wieambilla shooter’s brain wasn’t damaged by earlier heart attack, inquest hears

A man who joined his younger brother in a fatal sniper attack on police was not suffering from a significant brain injury at the time, a Queensland coroner has heard.

Nathaniel Train, 47, suffered a heart attack and had to be resuscitated 16 months before he took part in the shootings in December 12, 2022, that resulted in the deaths of six people at a remote property at Wieambilla, west of Brisbane.

Nathaniel Train had abandoned his successful teaching career.

State Coroner Terry Ryan on Tuesday heard from consultant neurologist Professor Christian Gericke as to whether Train suffered ongoing brain damage from a lack of oxygen during cardiac arrest and if this had affected his behaviour or caused psychosis.

Following his heart attack, Train abandoned his successful teaching career and illegally crossed the NSW-Queensland border during COVID lockdowns with a cache of firearms to live with his brother Gareth, 46, and Gareth’s wife, Stacey, 45, on their remote bushland block.

Gericke said he had reviewed Nathaniel’s medical records and found “positive evidence” to disprove he did not have an enduring brain injury following his cardiac arrest.

“There is very good evidence [he] did not suffer from this,” he said.

Gericke said Nathaniel was given a CT scan after his heart attack and it did not show brain damage.

The Train brothers concealed themselves along their driveway and fatally shot police constables Matthew Arnold, 26, and Rachel McCrow, 29, without warning.

The constables had joined two other junior officers to serve an arrest warrant on Nathaniel.

The brothers also fatally shot their neighbour Alan Dare before specialist police killed all three Trains that night.

Gericke said large parts of Nathaniel’s brain were available to test at his autopsy, which offered the most accurate results for physical signs of damage from lack of oxygen, referred to medically as hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE).

“There was no damage ... except for the bullet. That caused some damage,” Gericke said.

The professor said he had seen thousands of patients with HIE and they had profound symptoms that doctors had not observed in Nathaniel Train.

Ryan heard medical records suggested Nathaniel had a rapid recovery after his heart attack. He had minor memory issues, but his cognitive scores were within normal range.

Gericke said Nathaniel had symptoms of delusional disorder even before his heart attack and there was a strong case for his having had a genetic predisposition to psychosis, given his brother suffered from the same mental illness.

A barrister for a Train family member asked Gericke if a heart attack without HIE could still have pushed Nathaniel towards paranoid or delusional thinking through shock and trauma of nearly dying.

“On the spectrum of probabilities ... psychotic illness is still more likely,” Gericke said.

AAP