Australian police believe they have shot and killed Dezi Freeman after the double-murderer spent seven months on the run.
A well-known conspiracy theorist, Freeman gunned down two police officers on his property in the small Victorian town of Porepunkah last August, before fleeing into dense bushland and evading extensive searches.
Victoria Police say a man was shot dead after an hours-long standoff at a rural property in the state’s north-east on Monday morning. Chief Commissioner Mike Bush said the man is believed to be Freeman, 56, but formal identification is still underway.
Should [his identity] be confirmed… this brings closure to what was a tragic and terrible event.”
“Today an evil man is dead,” said Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan. “It’s over.”
Police say the man came out of a building – described as a cross between a container and a long caravan – wrapped in a blanket and armed with a gun, possibly one taken from one of the slain officers back in August.
“Our ultimate goal was to arrest the person,” Bush said.
“There was an opportunity for him to surrender peacefully but he did not.”
No officers were hurt during the operation, police said, which will be investigated, as is standard in police shootings.Freeman may have been surveilled for a week before shooting
Police may have been watching Dezi Freeman for as long as one week before an hours-long standoff led to his shooting death this morning, Hurley believes.
“They would want to know if anyone was helping him and they’d want to know his daily routine,” Hurley revealed.
“They would not have gone in at the first sight of him, at all. It would pose too many unacceptable risks.
“It could even be that the police had modelled or done scenarios based on them finding him, not necessarily in a container, but in a house or something like that.”
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