A heartbroken police commissioner has revealed why she toured the grisly crime scene where two young police officers were shot dead, as Australia mourns the lives lost in one of the worst tragedies in Queensland policing history.
Katarina Carroll said she ‘had to’ walk through the rural property in Wieambilla, three hours west of Brisbane, after police constables Matthew Arnold, 26, and Rachel McCrow, 29, were executed by its inhabitants at about 4:30pm on Monday.
Nathaniel Train, his brother Gareth and sister-in-law Stacey opened fire on four police officers who had been visiting the home for ‘routine’ check after receiving a missing person’s report.
Two of the officers were shot dead execution-style while a third constable Randall Kirk, 28, was hit in the leg but managed to escape, as the fourth, Keely Brough, also 28, managed to flee into bushland and evade the killers.
‘I had to do that, I had to see what happened, where it happened, and try to get a sense of why it happened,’ Commissioner Carroll told The Project as she fought back tears on Tuesday.
‘What is clear, what is very clear, is that they didn’t stand a chance. I cannot believe two officers made it out of there and bravely did what they had to do to survive.
‘Sadly we did lose two officers though, and as I said, going to the crime scene and seeing what they were confronted with – in my opinion it was not survivable.’
Katarina Carroll (pictured) said she ‘had to’ walk through the rural property in Wieambilla, three hours west of Brisbane, after police constables Matthew Arnold, 26, and Rachel McCrow, 29, were executed by its inhabitants at about 4:30pm on Monday
Commissioner Carroll said the four officers had been making a ‘routine’ visit to the home after NSW Police asked Queensland Police to do a missing person check on Nathaniel, who police believe had been missing for a year.
‘What they encountered was incredibly, incredibly difficult to understand,’ she said.
‘At the end of the day, I and the community, and the Queensland Police Service officers want to understand why this has happened.’
Police will ‘definitely’ be looking into Gareth’s involvement in the online conspiracy community she said, after it was revealed he regularly shared bizarre and deranged theories about world events.
In one online rant, he wrote that the Australian government was responsible for the Port Arthur Massacre, where 35 people were killed in Tasmania in 1996.
‘Anyone who watched the live media coverage at the time and was aware of the political deceit lead up knows that this was a Government Psychological Operation to disarm the Australian population,’ Train wrote in November 2020.
He also regularly shared his mistrust for the Queensland Special Emergency Response Team (SERT) – the same team that arrived at his home and shot him about 10.30pm local time on Monday night.
Four officers had attended a property on Wains Road, in Wieambilla, west of Brisbane, on Monday at about 4.30pm, after being asked by their colleagues in NSW to check on missing man Nathaniel Train. Two officers were shot dead
Constables Rachel McCrow, 29 (left) and Matthew Arnold, 26, (right) were both gunned down upon entering Gareth Train’s property in Wieambilla, rural Queensland
Four officers were at this Wains Road property at Wieambilla when they were fired upon
‘The state sponsored terrorising squaddies – SOG, SERT and other special people are but government paramilitary hammers,’ Train said in September last year.
Commissioner Carroll has spoken with the families of the four officers involved in the tragedy and described the conversations as ‘incredibly difficult’.
‘They’re not doing well. We’re all in tears, we’re all upset. In some ways, I think we’re angry because it’s hard to understand when a call when you’re protecting the community, it’s very hard to fathom, to make sense, of what’s occurred,’ she said.
‘We will get to the bottom of this. It feels callous, it feels senseless. It’s one of the most tragic days in policing history.’
Police are expected to interview friends and relatives in the coming days as a full-scale investigation is launched into the incident.
Neighbour Alan Dare (pictured) was shot dead by the two men after he went to investigate the gunshots
One of the two surviving officers, Constable Keeley Brough (pictured) fled into surrounding bushland, where she texted family members in the belief she was going to die, and urgently called for help
On Tuesday, the father of the brothers, Ronald Train – a retired pastor of 27 years – said: ‘I have lost two children.’
I am not going to share anything with you, you can speculate and make up as much as you want,’ Mr Train told The Chinchilla News outside his Toowoomba home.
‘I have already had conversations with police.’
Nathaniel Train had been a well-respected educator who was a leader in his field, with a track record of turning schools around and improving NAPLAN results – until a heart attack and a cheating row derailed his life.
Train had previously been principal at Innisfail East and Yorkeys Knob State Schools in far north Queensland where he won plaudits for his impact and results.
The 46-year-old then joined Walgett Community College Primary School in NSW as executive principal in 2020.
The property, owned by Gareth, who spoke of prepping his home for an apocalypse, and his wife Stacey was well off the grid, had extensive solar panels and water tanks
But within months, he found himself embroiled in a row over a cheating incident during a NAPLAN exam at the school.
One student, who shared a surname with a teaching assistant, was said to have been unable to answer the first two questions – but then got the next 34 all correct.
Nathaniel stopped working at the school in August after he suffered a massive heart attack at the school and had to be revived by his teachers.
The former teacher left his job and vanished in August 2021, walking out on his wife, and had not been seen for months before the savage ambush on Monday.
The cold-blooded shooting has sent shockwaves through the Western Downs community as locals leave flowers and tributes at their local police stations.
DailyMail
