It didn’t take long for Dezi Freeman to allegedly shoot and kill two police officers before he vanished into the bush in the Victorian high country, seemingly without a trace. That brief moment in time launched a manhunt that has involved hundreds of police officers from all over the country, some of Australia’s elite special forces, a visit from the premier and, as one local described it, a media “circus” in the small town of Porepunkah, in Victoria’s north-east.
It has also profoundly changed the lives of the people who knew and loved the officers who Freeman allegedly killed: Det Leading Sen Const Neal Thompson, 59, a local detective who had been planning his retirement, and Sen Const Vadim De Waart, 35, who was on temporary assignment to the state’s alpine region.
