A man accused of killing two police officers in Australia and seriously wounding a third has been shot dead by officers following a seven-month manhunt.
Dezi Freeman, 56, allegedly opened fire on police officers who came to serve a warrant at his home near Porepunkah, in the Victoria state northeast of Melbourne, on August 26 last year.
Freeman had not been seen since. On Monday, a man believed to be Freeman was fatally shot by police following a three-hour standoff at a remote location near Thologolong in the north of the state, Victoria’s police chief Mike Bush said.
“We believe it is Freeman, but we have to go through a formal identification process,” Bush told reporters in Melbourne.
Identification could take up to 48 hours through processes including fingerprinting, he said.
“This was all about bringing this to a conclusion as safely as possible,” Bush continued.
“Our ultimate goal was to arrest the person there … as peacefully as possible.”
Heavily armed Special Operations Group tactical police were involved in the stand off, and it was “strongly believed” Freeman was armed, Bush said.
Freeman had been inside a shelter like a shipping container and did take up a police offer to surrender, he added.
Detective Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson, 59, and Senior Constable Vadim De Waart, 35, of Victoria Police, were allegedly killed by Freeman while executing a search warrant last year.
Thompson had been just days away from retiring when he was killed, Victoria Police said.
The officers had been executing a search warrant as part of an investigation by the Wangaratta Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation Team.
The families of the officers killed were the first to be told about Freeman’s death, Bush said.
Freeman had fled the scene alone, on foot and armed, into the surrounding forest after the shooting.
Officers believe Freeman had assistance in hiding, and an investigation will now try and identify anyone who helped him, Bush said.
“If anyone was complicit, they will be held accountable,” he told reporters.
Australian news outlets widely reported that Freeman, also known as Desmond Filby, had co-called sovereign citizen beliefs, meaning he rejected the police and law.
He had wilderness survival skills that police feared could sustain him living in the open indefinitely.
Bush would not say whether a tipoff led police to the suspect on Monday, as a 1 million Australian dollar (about £517,430) reward for information had been issued.
More than 2000 pieces of information had been followed up on by detectives in their efforts to locate Freeman, a police statement said.
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