Australian police said on Monday a fugitive gunman, who had been on the run for seven months for allegedly killing two \u200bpolice officers, was believed to have been shot dead in a police \u200coperation in a remote town in Victoria state.<\/p>\n
“While the man is yet to be formally identified, police believe it is likely to be 56-year-old Porepunkah man Desmond Freeman,” Victoria Police said in a \u200bstatement.<\/p>\n
Freeman, previously known as Desmond Filby, was fatally shot at about 8:30am\u00a0\u200bon Monday (2130 GMT, Sunday) following a three-hour standoff at a rural property \u2060in northeast Victoria, Australian media widely reported.<\/p>\n
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush said \u200bthe police shooting was justified as officials investigate the exact circumstances of the incident and \u200bconduct a formal investigation.<\/p>\n
“Everything I know at this point tells me that this shooting was justified,” Bush said during a media briefing, adding that no police officers were injured during the incident.<\/p>\n
“There was an \u200bopportunity for him to surrender peacefully, which he did not … we’re working through the \u200bsequence of that. We strongly believe, yet to be confirmed, that he was armed.”<\/p>\n
Read:\u00a0Australia, EU agree new trade pact<\/p>\n
More than 450 police \u200cofficers \u2060had been involved in the hunt for Freeman since August, when he allegedly opened fire on a team of 10 police officers when they arrived at a property in Porepunkah, about 300 km (186 miles) northeast of Melbourne, to execute a search warrant.<\/p>\n
Authorities had \u200boffered a A$1 million ($684,700) reward \u200bfor information leading to \u2060his capture.<\/p>\n
Believed to have expert bushcraft skills and multiple powerful firearms, Freeman fled into bushland at Mount Buffalo National Park following \u200bthe shooting. Local media have described him as a “sovereign citizen”, a \u200bterm used \u2060for individuals who regard the government as illegitimate.<\/p>\n
The Age\u00a0newspaper reported Freeman was found and shot dead by police at a large rural property in the remote Walwa area in Victoria, \u2060about \u200b180 km (112 miles) northeast of Porepunkah.<\/p>\n
Satellite imagery showed the \u200bproperty was studded with multiple buildings, two shipping containers, a caravan and several derelict vehicles, the report said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Australian police said on Monday a fugitive gunman, who had been on the run for seven months for allegedly killing two \u200bpolice officers, was believed to have been shot dead in a police \u200coperation in a remote town in Victoria state. “While the man is yet to be formally identified, police believe it is likely …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3153"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3158,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153\/revisions\/3158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}