Wieambilla inquest: Trains ‘recruiting among Christian extremist group’

The murder of two police and a bystander by three Christian fundamentalists who died in a subsequent shootout was an act of terrorism, an inquest has heard.

American man, Donald Day Jr, left, influenced Gareth and Stacey Train online ahead of the Wieambilla shooting.

The murder of two police and a bystander by three Christian fundamentalists who died in a subsequent shootout was an act of terrorism, an inquest has heard.

With the Train family trio bunkered down and awaiting the end of days, associate professor of politics at Deakin University Josh Roose said he believed they were fuelled by their Christian premillennial belief that God would return to earth when the ambush took place in December 2022.

Gareth Train brought his wife, Stacey, and younger brother, Nathaniel, along on his Covid-sparked descent down an online rabbit hole from conspiracy ­theorist to followers of his own extreme and violent brand of Christianity.

While their radicalisation played out in full view of others in online forums and comment sections, the Trains fortified their remote property at Wieambilla, 311kms west of Brisbane, to prepare for the second coming of Christ.

Professor Roose said it was his view that on December 12, 2022, when four constables jumped their front gate, the Trains believed the battle between good and evil had been brought to their door.

What followed was an act of terror. “They were motivated by a religious ideology in which the police were public state actors, as they framed it, ‘devils and demons’, and they were in a war,” he said. “That’s not different to any other form of extremism and ­terrorism.”

Constables Matthew Arnold, 26, and Rachel McCrow, 29, were shot dead within two minutes of entering the Trains’ property. Two other officers managed to escape, but neighbour Alan Dare, 58, was killed when he went to investigate gunshots and fires linked to the ambush.

“I don’t think it was necessarily they thought that (the end time) was that day, but they certainly positioned themselves to be ready for an event,” Professor Roose said. “They were, in effect, waiting for the police … that initiation was an inherently offensive act, they were seeking to kill.”

Professor Roose assembled the puzzle of the insular family’s radicalisation from more than 2500 pieces of information, including in excess of 1400 emails and text messages, and notes handwritten by Stacey Train.

Gareth Train had a desire to be a leader, Professor Roose said. Unable to find fulfilment from fringe political and sovereign citizen movements, he began to communicate with US man Don­ald Day Jr in the comment section of his YouTube videos in June 2021.

The inquest heard this was a “key moment” in the Trains’ extremist trajectory.

From this point, Gareth Train was “intellectually reborn”, and his views on Christianity changed. His “thin” world view formed around a conspiracy ­theory that he’d carried for years moved into “really thick ideological adherence”.

“He had a purpose that conspiratorial thinking alone couldn’t offer him,” Professor Roose said.

The Trains radicalisation accelerated again a month before the ambush. They posted 15 ­videos online, taunting police and attempting to recruit more ­people into their group. At 6am on the day of the attack, they had been attempting to convince a woman to move from the US and join them.

Not all agree that the shooting was a terror attack. Consulting forensic psychologist Andrew Aboud previously told the inquest he believed the Trains were experiencing a shared delusional psychotic disorder.

While noting that 43 per cent of US evangelical Christians believe humankind was in the end times, Professor Roose said the Trains’ extremist views probably didn’t align with mainstream beliefs.

Consultant neurologist Christian Gericke also told the inquest on Tuesday that there was no evidence that Nathaniel Train’s beliefs were the result of an acquired brain injury from a heart attack he suffered in ­August 2021.