Police search Australian bush for gunman after two officers killed

POREPUNKAH, Australia: Police searched the Australian bush on Wednesday (Aug 27) for a heavily armed 56-year-old gunman still on the run a day after allegedly killing two officers and wounding a third.

Officers hunted through the night for the man identified as Dezi Freeman, who fled on foot into densely forested terrain after a shootout Tuesday morning in the northeast of Victoria state.

Police said they deployed "every resource" to find him, setting up a wide cordon at the scene, a rural property with a house and a bus in the small town of Porepunkah.

Freeman, described by local media as a radicalised conspiracy theorist, has survival skills and knows the area better than his pursuers, police said.

"The suspect for this horrific event is still at large," Victoria police chief commissioner Mike Bush told a news conference.

"I can assure everyone that we are pouring every resource into this search for this person. We must find him," he added.

"He is very dangerous. He's killed two police officers and injured a third."

Police urged people in the area to stay indoors until further notice and education authorities closed the local primary school during the hunt.

Officers spoke with the man's partner and children to ensure they were safe and to rule out any hostage situation.

Police believe Freeman has multiple "powerful" firearms, Bush said.

Ten police officers descended on the property on Tuesday morning to execute a search warrant when gunfire broke out, the police chief said.

Police "did discharge shots in his direction", apparently without wounding the gunman, Bush said.

The incident, which occurred "over minutes", resulted in the deaths of a 59-year-old detective and a 35-year-old senior constable.

The wounded officer had been operated on and was "significantly damaged" but would recover, the police chief said.

Freeman managed to flee the scene on foot despite officers giving chase, he said.

While not revealing the cause for the search warrant, Bush said the police team that went to the property included local officers and members of the sexual offences and child investigation squad.

The manhunt was challenging, he said, explaining that Freeman was believed to understand "bushcraft" - surviving in nature - and "he will know that area better than us".

Australia's The Age newspaper said Freeman was a self-professed "sovereign citizen", referring to a movement that falsely believes it is not subject to laws passed by the government.

Police declined to comment on those reports.

While fighting a speeding penalty in a Melbourne court, Freeman referred to police as "frigging Nazis", "Gestapo", and "terrorist thugs", according to copy of the judge's ruling last year.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the man's reported sovereign citizen beliefs remained allegations but the ideology and far-right extremism were a concern.

Australia's intelligence services had warned that the sovereign citizen movement posed a "very real" threat, he told national broadcaster ABC.

The prime minister recalled that he had attended the funerals of police killed by gunfire in December 2022 near the small Queensland town of Wieambilla.

Four police officers came under gunfire when they arrived at a tree-lined property in that incident. Six people were killed, including two police officers.

Deadly shootings are relatively rare in Australia, with police fatalities even rarer.

The latest deaths listed in a national memorial to fallen police showed three officers were killed on duty in separate incidents in 2023, including one by gunshot.

A ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons has been in place since a 1996 mass shooting in Port Arthur, Tasmania, in which a lone gunman killed 35 people.