A survivor of the Wieambilla massacre whose friend was shot and killed while standing next to him has demanded answers about why police failed to warn of the danger.
Victor Lewis travelled to the property with his friend Alan Dare to investigate a fire, and was standing shoulder to shoulder with Dare when he was shot and killed.
The Queensland coroner, Terry Ryan, held the third day of a coronial inquest into the deaths of police constables Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold and civilian neighbour Dare at a property in western Queensland at the hands of Nathaniel, Gareth and Stacey Train on 12 December 2022. The court has heard the trio were conspiracy theorists who planned to kill police, and believed in “premillennialism”.
The coroners court has heard a third, surviving police officer was relaying messages back through triple zero, which had been uploaded on to a digital system available statewide, including that police officers had been shot.
But this information was not passed on to Dare’s wife, Kerry Dare, during her own triple zero call prior to the men attending the property. Lewis said police had the opportunity to warn him but did not.
“If we were given a warning that something was going on we would not have been in the position we were in,” Lewis told the inquest.
“And not only Alan, I could have been dead, along with [Alan Dare’s wife] Kerry and my wife if we all went over there … We could have all been dead as well.”
The counsel assisting, Ruth O’Gorman, asked Lewis if one of the issues he wanted the inquest to investigate was why he and other neighbours weren’t warned about the shooting.
He said that he did and said: “If that was the policy of doing things, change it.”
Dare’s widow, who also gave evidence on Wednesday, said she would have called her husband back from the deadly scene if a triple zero operator had told her two police officers had been killed.
Both Dare and Lewis told the inquest that they clearly heard what they later learned was the police officers being gunned down at the Wains Road property outside Wieambilla, but thought nothing of it because recreational shooting is common in the area.
“I remember hearing up to six single gunshots then what we thought was a dog being shot. There was a yelp. I said to Al [Alan] ‘someone shot the dog’. And then there was another shot. We presumed that someone had fixed what they had done,” Kerry Dare said.
“There was what sounded to us like a semi-automatic. Al just looked to me and said ‘that’s not allowed’ and I said ‘are you going to go see them?’”
The court has heard that constable McCrow cried out in pain and begged for her life before being executed by Gareth Train.
In a recorded triple zero call played in court, an operator said to Kerry “I absolutely advise against that” when she told them her husband’s plans, but didn’t tell her any details.
Kerry said on Wednesday if she had been told about the shootout “I would have called my husband to come back”.
Dare said she remembers another part of a phone call with triple zero, which was not played on Wednesday. She believes she heard the gunshot that killed her husband and said to the operator “I heard that” and she said “I heard that too”.
Lewis, a former volunteer firefighter, went to the scene with Alan to fight what he thought was a bushfire but which turned out to be a burning police car ignited by the Trains. He lost a house to a bushfire 22 years ago.
He described to the court seeing his friend and neighbour fall to the ground suddenly. It wasn’t until he put Dare into the recovery position that he realised he’d been shot.
“Not knowing what was going on it was time to leave there, get away from there,” he said.
He crawled to his quad bike and fled the scene.
Lewis said he ran into two police vehicles on the road.
“I said to [an officer] ‘I think my mate’s just been shot’. He said ‘there’s an active shooter’. Jumped in his car. They both did a reverse back to Alan and Kerry’s driveway,” he said.
Lewis then picked up both his wife and Kerry to take them to safety.
They arrived at the corner of the block to find “50 police officers” at a command post on the corner.
He told the court he sat at the corner for hours trying to tell police what had happened to him and ask them what was going on and was ignored. At 9.30pm he left.
“Those police officers at that corner were there a long time before me and Alan went over there,” he said.
“They should have told us to stay home, if nothing else.”
Lewis told the court the police could have used an emergency system used for bushfires or some other means to warn them. He also believes the two police cars should have stayed with him until it was clear they were safe.
He said he approached several officers over the course of hours at the command post, all of whom told him they were too busy to talk to him. Lewis said he had “local knowledge” which would have assisted to get to the front gate of the property unseen, but was ignored for hours.
The court heard Kerry called triple zero, at 5.13pm and 5.17pm, and had previously heard one of the surviving officers had called triple zero at 4.44pm and was on the phone for two hours.
In an interview outside court, Kerry said she was likely to sue the government over the death of her husband.
“I don’t want money. I want them to admit that they fucked up, that’s all I want … I’m not in this for the money. I don’t need money,” she said.
“They have to admit to the world that it’s their fault, and that he wasn’t a fucking hero.
“He did not go out there to save anybody except ourselves.
“He was our hero and they took him away”
The inquest is expected to take five weeks.