A heavily armoured nine-and-a-half-tonne vehicle shook as a burst of gunfire was fired at its windscreen, a police officer said during an investigation.
The specialist officer had responded to a Wieambilla property where two police colleagues and a civilian had been ambushed and shot dead on 12 December 2022.
An investigation is underway into the deaths of officers Matthew Arnold and Rachel McCrow and neighbour Alan Dare, who were shot by Nathaniel, Gareth and Stacey Train at the property in the Western Downs area west of Brisbane.
Officers tried calling mobile phones attached to the trains before using a megaphone to call on the shooters to lay down their weapons.
Attempts to negotiate met with no response other than gunfire, state coroner Terry Ryan was told.
The three shooters were almost robotic, not gesturing or shouting, a specialist officer who cannot be identified said Thursday.
“They simply put themselves in suitable positions to shoot us with lethal weapons.”
The officer was in the front seat of the heavily armoured 9.5-tonne vehicle about 100 metres from a house on the property when a light shone in his direction and a burst of gunfire erupted.
An image from a police drone owned by the Train that was shown in the investigation.
Stacey and Gareth Train (pictured) at Wieambilla property
“The thrill of having several of those bullets hit the front of the BearCat (armored vehicle) was pretty surreal,” he said.
“I’ve never experienced anything like that before. It was just the magnitude of the caliber we were dealing with.”
The court was told that police had considered whether any of the trains were being held against their will, but it seemed clear that all three were there voluntarily as they continued to fire at police vehicles and a helicopter.
PolAir officers sent screenshots of the view to police on the ground to show where the trains were positioned.
Officers in the vehicles attempted to negotiate with the trains for more than an hour as they tried to avoid coming under intense fire.
After Gareth fired at Team Three, at 10:32 p.m. officers’ return fire shot Gareth in the hip and head, killing him.
Stacey shot the BearCat before entering the house, but it reappeared and fired a rifle, which the specialist officer said took him by surprise.
“I felt like we could try to negotiate with person of interest number three (Stacey),” he said of police beliefs during the incident.
After Stacey fired a second shot, the officer returned fire, hitting her in the head at 10:36 p.m.
After being shot, Stacey fell down the stairs and did not move.
PolAir sent screenshots of the view (pictured) to police on the ground so they knew exactly where the trains were positioned and where they were firing from.
After Gareth and Stacey Train were shot, police attempted to speak to Nathaniel, who was lying face down firing a rifle before reaching over a table to grab a Glock, the officer said.
‘SERT (Special Emergency Response Team) operative 106 is in the turret shouting at him to put down his weapons and show us his hands. Negotiations continued all the time to get him to surrender.’
He was standing behind a log before standing up, as his ‘last defense’ to fire a Glock (which he had taken from one of the dead officers) when a police sniper shot him.
High-calibre shots fired at the light armoured vehicle in which another specialist officer was travelling “had a major impact”, the inquest heard.
Gareth and Stacey Train (pictured) posted a video on the night of the shootings on their now-deleted YouTube channel.
“The vehicle weighs several tons and those bullets hit and moved the vehicle,” said the officer, who also cannot be identified, in the investigation.
‘When they were hitting the window and the windshield… inside the vehicle you could feel the percussion or the effects of that bullet hitting the glass.’
Two officers, Keely Brough and Randall Kirk, escaped the initial ambush when their colleagues were killed.
The investigation is scheduled to continue on Monday.
