John Maxwell
On the afternoon of December 12, 2022, four Queensland police officers arrived at a country property in the Western Downs region, 255km west of Brisbane, to check on the welfare of one of the residents. They jumped the locked gate and started walking up the long dirt driveway, chatting among themselves.
Lurking in a camouflaged hide, purpose-built to cover the driveway, were brothers Nathaniel and Gareth Train, both armed with scoped rifles, the former holding a Tikka T3 in .30.06 Springfield and his brother a Ruger Model 77 in .308 Winchester. At 4.37pm, less than two minutes later and without warning, Constable Matthew Arnold (26) was shot once in the chest by 46-year-old Nathaniel Train and killed instantly.
At the same moment Constable Rachel McCrow (29) was shot through her left shoulder. Who fired this shot isn’t clear as it could’ve been either man. Two minutes later she was shot twice more in the left and right legs, possibly by both men, all these shots fired at a range of around 70m.
The two other officers fled for their lives, one hiding in bushland for the next two hours, with the Trains lighting fires in a bid to flush him out. Roughly eight minutes after the initial shot, Gareth Train (47) approached the wounded officer who emptied her Glock .22 service pistol of all 15 rounds of .40 Smith & Wesson, all to no effect. She pleaded for her life before Train murdered her with a close range shot to the head, imagery from her body camera clearly showing the men responsible for her death.
Just under an hour later, neighbour Alan Dare (58) stood at the front of the property, seeking to investigate a potential fire hazard in the area. He too was shot dead. Finally around 10.39pm, six hours after the first shot, it was all over. After a shootout with officers from the Queensland Police Special Emergency Response Team (SERT), the Train brothers were shot and killed, as was Stacey Train (45) wife of Gareth and ex-wife of Nathaniel.
Thus ended the Wieambilla siege, a tragedy which cost six lives and prompted a lengthy inquest before Queensland State Coroner Terry Ryan. Among the matters he considered was what firearms the Trains possessed, where they sourced them and whether they held firearms licences.
An immediate impact on Australia’s sizeable number of licensed shooters was a renewed push for a National Firearms Register. Central to that was the question: Would police have gone to the Wieambilla property better prepared and in greater numbers, had they known the residents were armed and intent on the carnage which followed?
An nationwide register was promised in the 1996 National Firearms Agreement, which mandated registration of guns in those jurisdictions where it didn’t previously exist. Australia did achieve national firearms registration, though many jurisdictions retained paper records, cumbersome and scarcely amenable to the rapid review we’ve come to expect in the digital age.
Coroner Ryan concluded no government or other authority had information which would’ve indicated a risk the Trains would act the way they did. He did make one specific gun control-related recommendation. Considering the mental delusions of the Trains, the Queensland Government should consider the introduction of mandatory mental health assessments for firearms licence applicants.
He noted Western Australia and NSW both required mental health assessments of firearms licence applicants, though for NSW it’s only if the registry identifies potential risk factors, such as a history of mental illness or self-harm. For Queensland that remains a work in progress.
During the hearing there was significant evidence on the Trains’ firearms. Considering the magnitude of events, police conducted a highly detailed examination of the site, locating precisely 200 spent cartridge cases, 84 from Queensland police firearms and 116 from non-police firearms. Some of those 84 were actually fired by the Train brothers, who’d helped themselves to the Glock handguns from the two dead constables. In all, police recovered eight firearms, the two Glocks and six others.
Gareth Train previously held a Queensland licence, which had been cancelled in 1998 for what was described as a minor weapons offence. Stacey Train never held any firearms licence. At the time of the shooting, only Nathaniel Train held a current licence issued in NSW. He had five firearms registered in his name: two Tikka T3 rifles both in .30.06, a Marlin 336 in .30.30, a 12-gauge double-barrel coach gun and a CZ 452 ZED ZKM in .22LR.
He also held a Queensland licence which had been suspended in August 2022. That came about after he sought to drive from NSW into Queensland during Covid travel restrictions. Abandoning his longtime partner and job as a school principal at a community college in Walgett, NSW he headed north, apparently to join his brother at the Wieambilla property.
While seeking to cross the border his vehicle became bogged in flood waters. He ditched some of his gear, including three firearms and some ammunition, retaining one of the Tikkas and the CZ 452. Eventually his vehicle was towed out and he continued into Queensland. Subsequently, warrants were issued for his arrest for three offences including abandoning the guns and ammunition. His Queensland firearms licence was suspended and, despite several efforts by Queensland police, he wasn’t located before December 12.
The officers’ visit to the property that day was actually prompted by a call from NSW police seeking a welfare check on Nathaniel Train, requested by his former longtime partner who’d reported him missing. All eight firearms found at the property were forensically inspected, tested for DNA and fingerprints and test-fired. Police also sought to determine their registration status and provenance.
Both the Tikka rifle, used by Nathaniel Train, and CZ rifles used by Stacey Train were acquired legally and registered to the former. The Ruger M77 used by Gareth Train wasn’t registered and was likely acquired by someone pre-1996 and never registered.
Inside a vehicle on the property, police found a scoped Swedish Mauser in 6.5×55, the coroner concluding it had been fired by Gareth Train during the confrontation. It too had never been registered, similarly a sawn-off Norinco .22 rifle and sawn-off Boito double-barrelled shotgun.
A police firearms officer gave evidence there was nothing exceptional about the type and quantity of firearms used by the Trains. He did add they were in pretty poor condition. The Trains weren’t handloading any of their ammunition, with all ammo found on the property factory-made in common brands such as Winchester, Remington and Hornady. The quantity wasn’t considered excessive.
Putting that into perspective, the officer told the inquest he’d been involved in one investigation of people described as ‘preppers’, where more than 350 guns and four tons of ammunition were located, including semi-automatic and fully-automatic firearms.
After murdering the two officers and their neighbour, the Trains must’ve realised there was no going back. Coroner Ryan devoted much of the inquest to assessing their background and motivations, concluding they were suffering from a shared delusional disorder. “They were operating within a delusional framework, in which they believed they were defending themselves from demonic, evil state actors who, by entering their property, were intent on attacking them, such that they had to violently resist in order to reach salvation,” he said.
As officers moved in, the Trains were repeatedly called on to lay down their arms and give up. The response was gunfire. Police had a good appreciation of their opposition thanks to a pair of helicopters circling overhead. From around 7pm and for the next 15 minutes, Gareth Train took potshots at one of the aircraft without effect.
Thermal imagery from the helicopters reveal some surprisingly domestic moments. In one image, Gareth and Stacey can be seen sitting at an outdoor table, apparently enjoying a cuppa. They even recorded a 41-second video and uploaded it to YouTube with the title Don’t be Afraid, in which they refer to having killed the “devils and demons” who’d entered their property.
From 8.30pm SERT vehicles began to arrive at the property. Images in the coroner’s report show a pattern of bullet strikes on the armoured windscreen of a police Bearcat armoured vehicle, forcing it to retreat. Examination of the Bearcat revealed at least 16 points of damage from at least 18 bullets or bullet fragments. Police concluded they were up against people armed with high-powered rifles who knew what they were doing.
The end was inevitable and came quickly. Gareth Train died at 10.31pm from a gunshot wound to the head. He was also struck on his left thigh. Stacey Train died at 10.36pm from a single gunshot wound to the head and Nathaniel three minutes later from gunshot wounds to his head and torso.
- This article was held over from our February edition due to sensitivities over the Bondi tragedy.