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28-08-2025
MELBOURNE: Australian police are continuing a massive search for a heavily armed man suspected of shooting and killing two officers in a rural town.
Ten police officers were fired upon on Tuesday after travelling to the property in Porepunkah about 300km (186 miles) north-east of Melbourne to execute a warrant for alleged sexual offences.
Almost 24 hours later, police have named the suspect as local man Dezi Freeman, 56, and confirmed he is “still at large”.
Police have deployed officers, a helicopter and armored vehicles to the area and warned locals to stay inside until Freeman is caught.
“We are pouring every resource into the search,” Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police Mike Bush said.
“Be vigilant, keep yourselves safe.”
He has previously said the two officers were “murdered in cold blood” and identified them as a 59-year-old detective and a 35-year-old senior constable but said their names won’t be released until relatives had been informed.
A third officer who was injured in the shooting was now out of surgery, Bush said, and though “significantly damaged” he would recover.
He also addressed previous reports by local media that Freeman had taken his family hostage, adding that police had spoken to his partner and children and they were safe.
Authorities have had no sightings of Freeman since he ran off after the shooting, and are focusing on “dense bush area” near his home.
“He will know that area better than us so that is why we are putting in every expert, supported by local knowledge,” Bush said.
“Our understanding is that he understands bushcraft well which provides a challenge to us.”
Surrounded by heavily wooded hills in the Australian Alps, Porepunkah is only about an hour’s drive from the New South Wales border.
Bush added that police are searching a “very, very wide” area and are also exploring whether Freeman may have left the state though there is “no information” at this point to suggest that has happened.
The shooting happened on Tuesday, when 10 armed police officers tried to execute a search warrant at Freeman’s property in Porepunkah, a town of just over 1,000 people located 320 kilometers (200 miles) northeast of Melbourne.
Freeman killed a 59-year-old detective and a 35-year-old senior constable, Bush said. Another detective was shot but his wounds are not life threatening.
The officers “were met by the offender and they were murdered in cold blood,” the police chief said. The man fled alone, on foot and armed into surrounding forest where a sweeping search for him continued through the night and into Wednesday.
Bush would not elaborate on the search warrant for Freeman’s property and said it was “too soon to say” if his attack on the officers was ideologically motivated but he told reporters that attending officers included members of a unit that investigates sexual offenses and child abuse.
Australian news outlets widely reported that Freeman espoused so-called sovereign citizen beliefs, citing a 2021 video taken in Wangaratta Magistrate’s Court and published online in which the he can be seen attempting unsuccessfully to arrest a magistrate and police officers while representing himself in a hearing.
Members of self-proclaimed sovereign citizen movements use debunked legal theories to reject government authority. In a 2024 finding from Victoria’s Supreme Court, where Freeman tried to challenge a lengthy suspension of his drivers’ license. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
