Ambush teacher Stacey Train quit job a day before vax deadline

The teacher involved in the ambush of police, who was ‘was still shooting laying on the ground’, quit the local school as she refused to take the mandatory Covid vaccination.

Stacey Train, pictured in 2011, was shot dead by police at a property in Wieambilla. Picture: Louise Cheer / South Burnett Times

A former school principal involved in the ambush of police that killed two constables and a neighbour on a remote Queensland property quit the local school one day before the state’s Covid vaccination mandate came into effect.

Mother-of-two Stacey Train, her husband, Gareth Train, and brother-in-law Nathaniel Train were shot dead by police on Monday night after the earlier ambush of police who visited the property near Chinchilla, west of Brisbane.

Constables Rachel McCrow, 29, and Matthew Arnold, 26, and good Samaritan neighbour Alan Dare, 58, died in the execution-style killings.

Veteran teacher and principal Stacey Train and her husband had been living in the remote area, preferred by some residents who want to “live off the grid”. They had been joined by Nathaniel Train some time after he had a heart attack as principal of the Walgett Community College Primary School in Aug­ust last year.

Stacey Train had been working at nearby Tara Shire State College for several years as a teacher and head of curriculum, after leadership roles in regional schools across the state, including as principal at Proston, west of Gympie.

Sources have confirmed she quit the college on December 16 last year – one day before the December 17 deadline for all staff to have had a first dose. “She chose to resign rather than have a vaccination,” the source said.

Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold were shot dead in the ambush.

Police are also investigating whether Nathaniel Train also refused to be vaccinated in NSW; his contract was formally terminated in March this year.

Gareth Train, who is believed to have worked for Education Queensland as a groundskeeper, resigned in May 2016.

The Australian revealed on Wednesday that Stacey Train and Nathaniel Train had been married before she left him for his brother.

Both Stacey Train and Nathaniel Train were decorated school teachers and principals.

Stacey Train started her teaching career at the Charters Towers State High School in February 2004, and told a local newspaper she wanted to work in a regional area with a community feel and smaller class sizes.

In late 2004, she, Gareth and Nathaniel bought a house together in Millstream, near Ravenshoe on the Atherton Tablelands, for $107,000.

A Facebook image of Alan Dare, who was also shot dead.

Property records show Gareth Train had become estranged from some of his family members by that time, selling his share in a Darling Downs house he owned with relatives to his father, Ronald Archie Train, in August 2004 for $15,000. Gareth Train and his relatives had owned the Cambooya house since 1997.

By 2007, Stacey Train had become the Herberton State School head of department when the school won an award for Indigenous education excellence.

In January 2009, the trio sold the Millstream house for $235,000, but property records show they again used the same address, this time in Proston, west of Gympie, where Stacey Train was principal of the local state school.

The road leading into Wains Road at Wieambilla is guarded by police. Picture: David Clark NCA/Newswire

By mid-2013, Nathaniel Train was the principal at the Innisfail East State School, south of Cairns, and was profiled by The Australian after the school, which had a high number of Indigenous students, did very well at NAPLAN.

At the time, Nathaniel Train recalled one mother telling him: “All I want is my kid not to roam the streets.”

In July 2011, Stacey Train attended a five-day Indigenous-led Stronger Smarter school leaders’ training course at the Aboriginal community of Cherbourg and was perceived as “enthusiastic and energetic”. She was photographed wearing an Education Queensland polo shirt and it is believed she was then working in northwest Queensland in Camooweal, outside Mount Isa.

By 2017, Nathaniel Train was the popular principal at Yorkeys Knob school in Cairns, but resigned from Queensland’s Education Department in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic.

In February 2021, Gareth and Stacey train sold a vacant parcel of land on the Western Downs near Chinchilla at Kumbarilla – containing two gas wells that generated about $1300 annually – for $62,000. They had bought it for $50,000 in September 2013.

On the ground in Tara, locals said the trio was largely forgettable and kept to themselves. Multiple parents whose children attend Tara Shire State College couldn’t remember Stacey Train.

“They flew under the radar,” said the manager of the local Foodworks.

Additional reporting: Sarah Elks, Mackenzie Scott