police custody – Michmutters
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Australia

Queensland family shooting: Accused charged with three counts of murder, one charge of attempted murder

A 59-year-old man has been charged with three counts of murder following the horrific mass shooting on remote farmland in Queensland.

The accused, identified by The Courier-Mail as long-term Bogie resident Darryl Young, is also facing one charge of attempted murder.

He will appear in the Proserpine Magistrates Court on Monday.

Mervyn and Maree Schwarz and their son Graham Tighe were killed in Bogie on Thursday.

Ross Tighe – Graham’s brother – survived the shooting and is currently in hospital after being shot in the stomach.

Police allege the weapon used in the shooting was a rifle.

“It will be alleged that around 9am, police received a report that three people had been fatally shot at a property on Shannonvale Road and another man had suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen,” the police said in a statement.

“The injured man remains in Mackay Base Hospital in a stable condition with a single gunshot wound to the stomach.”

“How it happened in this day and age is beyond me. It’s not America,” Maree Schwarz’s brother-in-law, Greg Austin, told TheDailyMail.

Mr Austen said he was completely shocked when he heard the news, describing his loved ones as an “honest Christian family”.

“They were a bush family who worked seven days a week and had beers on Sundays, participated in events, very community-minded and well-respected in the community. Just a normal Australian family,” he said.

Mr Austen told news.com.au he learned of the shooting through “dribs and drabs” from the rest of his family.

“I have sisters and that over there, or on their way there, and it was just what we were hearing from them. They obviously were talking to the police, and we just got information from them when we could,” he said.

And in a tragic detail, Mr Austen revealed Graham Tighe had only spent three days with his newborn son before the shooting. The baby had just come home after three weeks in hospital in Brisbane.

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How the situation unfolded

Emergency crews were called to a property in Bogie – a small outback mining town in the Whitsundays near Collinsville – at 8.54am on Thursday.

Three people were confirmed deceased after police were notified of reports that multiple people had been shot in the area.

After finding the sole survivor, Ross, in a vehicle at Flagstone, an emergency declaration was made at 11.30am under the Public Safety Preservation Act, with boundaries encompassing Sutherland Rd, Normanby Rd, Mount Compton Rd and Starvation Creek.

This emergency declaration has since been revoked.

Police revealed Ross managed to alert police to the shooting after escaping the scene and miraculously traveling “many, many kilometers” while suffering from a gunshot wound.

“We believe that the male was able to extract himself from the area when he was spoken to by a police officer many, many kilometers away from the crime scene,” Queensland Police Acting Superintendent Tom Armitt said on Thursday.

“He was fleeing from the scene… he was able to tell police that he had been shot and three others (were) also shot.”

Police said he fled the scene in a red ute before contacting the authorities.

Mr Austen told the Daily Mail that his nephew-in-law showed incredible courage, describing him as a “very strong man”.

“Ross has two girls, but he’s OK. I haven’t spoken to him yet because he’s about three hours away, but we’re heading there,” he said.

“To witness what unfolded in front of him and then to be able to walk back to the car shows real resilience, and I’m sure he won’t forget it for the rest of his life.”

He was flown to Mackay Hospital in a critical condition and rushed into emergency surgery.

He is now in a serious but stable condition in the intensive care unit.

Police were able to interview him on Thursday night and are expected to speak with him again today.

speaking to Sunrise on Friday morning, Acting Superintendent Armitt said police “believe” they have the alleged shooter in custody.

“The person who has been nominated for that offense is with us here in custody,” he said.

“We haven’t pressed any charges at this point in time while our investigations are ongoing.”

Police spoke to five people on Thursday night in relation to the shooting.

Two of the people who were spoken to by police were reportedly wind farm contractors who happened to be near the property at the wrong time. They were released on Thursday night.

Two other people, family members of the 59-year-old man still in custody, have also now been released.

The man still in custody was located by police on the property following the shooting.

“At that particular point in time when we initially received the call we had no idea who or where the shooting offender was and obviously we had to push forward into the scene being very mindful of our own safety and at the risk of police officers being shot. ,” Acting Superintendent Armitt told reporters on Friday.

“We were able to make contact with the people on the property and organize taking them into custody.”

$10m property and neighborhood dispute in the spotlight

An alleged neighborhood dispute is forming a major part of investigations, with Acting Superintendent Armitt revealing parties involved in the event were neighbours.

Mr and Mrs Schwarz, along with Graham, had only purchased the 300-square-kilometre property in May 2021, according to the Daily Mail.

They paid $10 million for the land, which is zoned for cattle grazing, breeding and farming purposes.

Acting Superintendent Armitt also appeared on Nine’s Today show on Friday, providing some more detail on the alleged neighborhood dispute.

“There is not too much detail I can tell you right now. What we do know is that the parties involved are neighbors and some conversation has occurred between the parties and resulted in a meeting up of the parties at the boundary line in the early hours of yesterday morning when the incident occurred,” he said.

Later on Friday, the Acting Superintendent provided some further insight on the layout of the properties in the area, revealing the scene of the shooting was an hour-and-a-half away from Collinsville in a very remote area.

“We are talking properties of the size of tens of thousands of acres and between the two properties in question it’s actually a 45 minute drive between the neighbours,” I explained.

“At the crime scene, which is at the front gate of one of the promises, it is a 3km drive between the gate and the house at that location.”

Mike Brunker from the Whitsunday Regional Council told Sunrise the family moved to the area from out west, describing the situation as “absolutely tragic”.

“The road leading up to that particular property, there’s some small boutique rural residential areas and then, of course, at the end of the road is the cattle properties that we’re talking about,” he said.

“I think these people had only moved over here 12 months ago from out west.”

‘It’s shocking’: Town rattled by horror shooting

Mr Brunker said a tragic event like this is the last thing the Bogie community would ever think it would make national news for.

According to the latest census data, Bogie has a population of just 207 people, making it an extremely tight knit community.

Locals from nearby Bowen and Collinsville described the incident as “unusual” and “strange” for the usually quiet area.

“There haven’t been many shootings there (Bogie) before … it’s very unusual,” a business owner in Collinsville said.

Bowen resident Shontai McLennan told the DailyMercury that the situation came as a complete shock to many.

“We’re traditional owners of this land around Collinsville. I wouldn’t have thought it could happen here. It’s a small town,” she said.

Redcliffe man Warren Davidson told the publication he had seen multiple emergency vehicles racing along the road as he was on his way to Bowen from Ingham.

“Then we heard it on the CB radio that there’d been a shooting. It’s pretty shocking,” he said.

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Categories
Business

Mum Lisa Fulmore defends are held over shooting of McDonald’s worker

The mum of a man held in the shooting of a New York City McDonald’s worker over cold fries says that her son told her he did what he had to do.

Lisa Fulmore, 40, revealed her 20-year-old son’s chilling comments to the New York Post while describing exactly what led up to Monday night’s shooting that left a 23-year-old fast-food employee clinging to life.

“I talked to my son with the cops. My son is just saying that he gotta do what he gotta do and the [victim] came after him and whatever happened, happened,” she said.

The mother of three boys said the incident unfolded after she ordered McDonald’s on her mobile app and went to the Bedford-Stuyvesant eatery in Brooklyn around 7pm to pick up her food, which included fries.

“The fries were cold,” Fulmore said. “I asked the girl to change the French fries because the fries were cold. She went to the French fry machine for maybe 10 seconds and brought back fries, so I thought they were new fries, so I had left.

“So I taste the fries, and after I got to the third one, it was a cold fry still. So I went back to take the food back.

“I asked her, ‘Why would you give me the same fries and just put one or two on top to make me think that you gave me new fries?’ She started laughing, and all of them started laughing, acting like it’s funny,” Fulmore said.

“I was like, ‘What’s funny? I paid for food and I should get what I asked for.’ They laughed at me.

“One of them was like, ‘All of this over fries?’ So now I’m arguing with them back and forth.”

Referring to the worker who was later shot, Fulmore said: “The boy where they cook the food at was like, ‘You got all this food in your teeth.’

“So I said, ‘You wanna take it out? You’re saying I got all this food in my teeth, you wanna take it out?’”

Fulmore said she asked to speak to their boss and the workers said the manager had stepped out.

“Everybody started laughing again,” she said.

“This is when I was on the phone with my son. I was like, ‘They in this McDonald’s playing with me.’ I was like, I got kids their age, I’m not going to sit here and keep arguing with these little kids. He was like, ‘I’m coming down the block.’

“I was like, ‘Alright.’ … Then I told him, ‘No, don’t come to McDonald’s because I don’t want you to get in trouble.’”

But she said her son was already at the restaurant.

“He was like, ‘I’m coming in.’ So I came in. I heard them saying stuff to me, so he was like, ‘You all gotta back off my mother.’

Again referring to the worker later shot, Fulmore said: “My son said, ‘come outside’ to the boy in the back.”

The employee did not exit the restaurant at that point and Fulmore said she then told her son to just leave “because I didn’t want him to get in trouble”.

“So I’m thinking my son was gone,” she said. “I’m thinking it was over because my son left the store.”

According to Fulmore, 10 or 15 minutes later the male worker came over to her asking: “Where your son at?”

She said she told him her son left and to mind his own business.

“He went looking for my son,” she said. “The next thing you know, maybe like 10 minutes later, you hear a gunshot. So I ran to the door. I said, ‘Who’s shooting?’”

She said someone replied, “Your son.”

“I looked, and I saw a boy on the ground, and then I saw my son running the other way. I called 911 and then I sat there and waited.”

When asked if her son had a gun, Fulmore said she didn’t know, adding, “I don’t even know if my son did that,” referring to the shooting.

“The only thing I know is that my son was arguing with the boy and the boy did go out looking for my son.”

She said the victim changed his shirt at one point, “and he had something under the blue shirt, that’s why he put the big blue shirt on”.

Law-enforcement sources said the victim had no prior arrests and there was no indication he was carrying a weapon when he was killed.

But Fulmore, referring to the critically injured worker, said: “There was no reason for him to go outside looking for somebody. Whatever happened outside, you caused that to happen.”

Fulmore’s son is in police custody but has not been charged in the shooting.

He has been previously arrested several times, including for grand larceny in 2019 and assault and theft of service in 2018, police sources said. He also has numerous sealed arrest cases, they said.

Additional reporting by Larry Celona and Kate Sheehy

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission

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