Police declare Wieambilla a Christian “terrorist attack”

By HARRY CLARKE

THE three family members who executed two police officers and a civilian at Wieambilla in December subscribed to a radical Christian belief system known as “premillennialism” and had throughly planned their murderous ambush, investigators have revealed.

Nine weeks after Nathaniel, Gareth and Stacey Train gunned down Tara police constables Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold, as well as the Trains’ neighbour Alan Dare, police have provided a significant update on their investigations.

At a media conference in Brisbane, QPS Deputy Commissioner Tracy Linford said analysis of “many, many documents” uncovered at the Trains’ property north of Tara, including text messages and emails, body worn camera and CCTV footage, and more than 190 statements to police had found the three killers acted alone and were driven by “fundamentalist” Christian beliefs.

“All of that analysis has provided us significant information and understanding about what drove the motivation of the Train family members on that day,” Dep. Comm. Linford said.

“Our assessment has concluded that Nathaniel, Gareth and Stacey Train acted as an autonomous cell and executed a religiously motivated terrorist attack.

“What we’ve been able to glean from that information is that the Train family members subscribed to what we would call a broad Christian fundamentalist belief system known as premillennialism. 

“It’s a belief system that comes from Christian theology. Its basic interpretation is that there is a belief that Christ will return to the earth for a thousand days and provide peace and prosperity, but it will be preceded by a time of tribulation, widespread destruction and suffering. 

“What we’ve been able to illicit from all the material that we’ve examined, particularly Stacey’s diary notes, is that we think a range of different things helped to contribute to their belief in this system – the Covid pandemic, climate change, global conflicts, social disparity – all those kind of things.

“Early speculation around the motivation of the Train family members was that it centred on sovereign citizen ideology. 

“That’s understandable because some of the behaviour of the Train family members was similar to what you see with sovereign citizen members, being they had withdrawn from society, they were isolated, they were making plenty of comments about anti government sentiment. 

“But in all the examination of the material we can’t find anywhere where the Train family members declared themselves as sovereign citizens.

“While the behaviour was similar in some respect to sovereign citizens, we don’t believe this was connected to a sovereign citizen ideology. We believe it’s connected to the Christian extremist ideology.

“We can see that they do see the police as monsters and demons. We don’t believe this attack was random or spontaneous. We do believe that it was an attack directed at police.

“On the property there were camouflaged hideouts where we believe periodically one of the three family members would lie in wait.

“There was camouflaged clothing, there were multiple erected barriers. Some of those were dirt mounds, some of those were logs, other steel barriers.

Dep. Comm. Linford said six firearms, three compound bow-and-arrows and a number of knives were located at the property.

“At the address they had CCTV footage. The gates were locked. We even found that they had mirrors in trees. We suspect that was to alert them if vehicles were travelling down the road. They had radios. We even located a trap door under the house which might have enabled an easy escape.

“I was to stress, there is absolutely no evidence at this time that there is anyone else in Australia that participated or assisted in this attack.

“We are not looking for anyone else in Australia.”

She said investigators were continuing to prepare a report for the coroner.