Police have charged a man with making death threats against Brittany Higgins and her fiance, David Sharaz, including threatening to kill their pet dog.
Higgins and Sharaz have faced widespread abuse on social media platforms in the past 12 months, prompting an unprecedented intervention by the cyber safety commissioner last year.
Detectives attached to New South Wales police’s terrorism investigation squad have now charged a man with making death threats against the pair. Police say they were already investigating the man for alleged threats made against participants of a mass gathering, uncovering 49 similar threats or offensive material sent from a set of linked social media accounts.
The investigation revealed alleged threats against Higgins and Sharaz.
“Further inquiries revealed one of the accounts was also linked to messages sent on social media to a man in the ACT, allegedly threatening to kill the man, his partner, and their pet dog,” police said.
Screenshots show Sharaz received direct messages saying he knew where they were, that they would both be buried, and followed home and destroyed.
“I will kill you both when you least expect it,” a user wrote.
“I’m going to chop Kingston [the couple’s toy cavoodle] up into little pieces.”
Guardian Australia understands the threats were made last year and were reported to Queensland police at first. ACT policing began investigating, before passing the matter to NSW police and its counter-terrorism squad.
The man, David William Wonnocott, 49, was arrested by counter-terrorism detectives at Tweed Heads police station at 10am on Wednesday.
They have served him with a firearm ban and searched his vehicle and home at Banora Point. He has been bailed and will appear at Tweed Heads local court next month.
“There is no current or impending threat to the community as a result of this operational activity,” police said.
The couple were forced to spend thousands of dollars on a home security system and Sharaz was advised to begin taking different routes to and from work.
This month Guardian Australia revealed that the nation’s eSafety commissioner had deployed tough new cyber abuse powers for the first time to force Twitter to remove severely harmful content targeting Higgins and Sharaz. That content is not linked to Wonnocott.
Correspondence showed that Sharaz was forced to lodge a formal complaint with the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, in April last year, due to Twitter’s inaction.
His complaint singled out a highly offensive tweet – which Guardian Australia has chosen not to republish – that exemplified the widespread abuse and harassment the pair have suffered online.
The commissioner acted quickly in response and intervened using new adult cyber abuse powers to issue a formal notice to Twitter to remove the content.
It was the first time the eSafety commissioner had issued such a notice since the Online Safety Act was enacted in January 2022.
