The Australian police said on Monday they had killed a man they believed was the fugitive who fatally shot two police officers in the state of Victoria seven months ago, then disappeared into the wilderness.
The long hunt came to an end early Monday after a three-hour standoff at a property in Thologolong, a rural town about 240 miles northeast of Melbourne, the police said in a statement. The suspect — believed to be Dezi Freeman, 56 — was fatally shot after he came out of the building with “something” over his shoulders, Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush told reporters on Monday.
“He then pulled a firearm from underneath that and presented it at our people,” Commissioner Bush said. “That action took away any discretion our officers had to resolve this peacefully.”
He said the authorities were “confident” the man was Mr. Freeman, “but before we confirm 100 percent, we want to do it forensically.”
The authorities had been searching for him for months, combing dense bush and steep terrain dotted with mine shafts and caves that surrounds the rural town of Porepunkah, about 90 miles south of Thologolong.
It was there on Aug. 26, as police were executing a search warrant of Mr. Freeman’s property, that he was accused of shooting and killing Senior Constable Vadim De Waart and Detective Neal Thompson, who was just days away from retiring. A third officer was injured.
The 216-day search for Mr. Freeman, who according to the police knew how to survive in the bush, has been among the most resource intensive in the department, Commissioner Bush said. At one point, the police said they had no proof Mr. Freeman was alive and speculated that he may have died.
Under cover of darkness on Monday, the police surrounded a building that the commissioner described as something between a long caravan and a shipping container. They were in a standoff with a man inside, believed to be Mr. Freeman, for three hours, he said. It was unclear whether Mr. Freeman fired the gun at officers before he was killed.
The commissioner said he could not provide further details about how long Mr. Freeman had been at the site, what items were inside the building, or if the firearm was one he reportedly took from one of the slain police officers months earlier.
Mr. Freeman had a history of associating with “sovereign citizen” ideology — a fringe belief that government authority or laws do not apply to some people — and had several run ins with the law, including trying to arrest a court magistrate during a dispute about national park access.
After last year’s shooting, Mr. Freeman’s wife, who was at the property during the episode, urged her husband to surrender and offered her condolences to the families of the officers who died.
Premier Jacinta Allan of Victoria said on Monday that the shootings had hung over the local community like a dark shadow, but it had somewhat lifted. “These memories will remain and the pain will live in these communities also,” she added.
Laura Chung is a Sydney-based reporter and researcher for The Times, covering Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.
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