Police have labelled last year’s shooting of two police officers and a neighbour in the Queensland town of Wieambilla as Australia’s first fundamentalist Christian terrorist attack.
In December, four junior officers who tried to enter the property of Gareth, Nathaniel and Stacey Train for what police described as a routine missing person check were instead met with a hail of bullets, killing two, sending one running for his life with a bullet wound and the fourth hiding in long grass that her assailants set ablaze.
A neighbour was later shot and killed before a shootout with police left all three Trains dead.
The Queensland police deputy commissioner, Tracy Linford, told reporters on Thursday that in the weeks since the attack, police and security agencies had trawled through Stacey’s diary and the trio’s phones and online communications to piece together their motives for the attack.
“Our assessment has concluded that Nathaniel, Gareth and Stacey Train acted as an autonomous cell and executed a religiously motivated terrorist attack,” she said.
“The Train family members prescribed to what we would call a broad Christian fundamentalist belief system known as premillennialism.
“I’m not an expert in that but, in its basic interpretation, is that there was a belief that Christ will return to the Earth for a thousand days, provide peace and prosperity, but it will be preceded by an era, or a period of time of tribulation and widespread destruction and suffering.”
Linford said the Covid pandemic, climate crisis, global conflict, anti-vaccine and anti-government sentiment and social disparity had seen the Trains spiral into increasingly radical theological beliefs.
“Christian extremist ideology has been linked to other attacks around the world, but this is the first time we’ve seen it occur in Australia,” she said.
“Probably the one people most might recognise was the Waco attack [in Texas in 1993].”
The Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Federal Police are also involved in the ongoing investigation, she said.
The Trains had viewed police as “monsters and demons” and had undergone “advanced preparation and planning” before the fatal shootout, Linford said.
“We don’t believe this attack was random or spontaneous. We do believe it was an attack directed at police.”
Linford said the trio had built camouflaged hides on their Wieambilla property where police believe one of the three would periodically “lie in wait”.
As well as six firearms, three compound bows and knives, the Trains had camouflage clothing, CCTV cameras and radios, and had built steel and log barriers, dirt mounds and put mirrors on trees, which police believe they used to be prepared for incoming traffic.
“We even located a trapdoor under the house which might have enabled an easy escape,” she said.
The deputy commissioner said she had personally met with the FBI as Queensland police believe a man in the US to be a “person of interest” in the shootings.
In the hours after the attack the Trains posted a chilling video to YouTube in which they appeared to address an Arizona-based conspiracist with whom the Trains had struck up an online friendship.
“We’ll see you when we get home, Don,” Gareth said at the end of the 41-second clip.
Linford said that police believed “home” referred to heaven.
“We believe ‘Don’ is a person of interest,” Linford said on Thursday.
“So we have worked with our US counterparts, provided the information that we have and they’ll determine what investigations they might make as a result of that information.”
But Linford stressed there was no evidence of any domestic link to the Trains’ “terrorist cell”.
She also said there appeared to be no connection to the sovereign citizen movement, althoughearly speculation of such a connection was “understandable” given the behaviour of the Trains.
The deputy commissioner said police had not found any communication in which the Trains declared themselves as sovereign citizens – which she said was often the case with adherents of that ideology.
The deputy commissioner said the Trains may have hoped to inspire others to follow their deadly example.
Asked if the threat of Christian extremists had been on the radar of police prior to the attack, Linford said it was “not something we’ve seen in Australia”.
Linford said police had collected more than 190 statements and recorded interviews but, it would fall to the coroner to make a final determination as to what had motivated the Trains and recommendations as to how to avoid such tragedies in the future.
