An Arizona man said to have influenced the people who ambushed and killed two police officers and a neighbour in a remote Queensland town in December 2022 is about to go on trial.
However, his lawyers have asked the court to exclude testimony from Australian police, claiming the “emotionally charged testimony of Australian law enforcement officials” could jeopardise his chances of a fair hearing.
Constables Matthew Arnold and Rachel McCrow had, along with two other officers, gone to a Wieambilla property owned by Gareth Train and his wife Stacey as part of an ongoing missing person case.
The shooters were Stacey and Gareth Train and Gareth’s brother Nathaniel. After a six-hour siege, police shot all three, but by then the two constables and a neighbour, Alan Dare, had been killed.
In February 2023, Queensland Police Deputy Police Commissioner Tracy Linford said their investigations had revealed that the Trains were extremists who subscribed to “a broad Christian fundamentalist belief system known as premillennialism,” and that they “executed a religiously motivated terrorist attack.”
Gareth was a known online conspiracy theorist, and the Trains posted a video titled “Don’t be Afraid” to both YouTube and a conspiracy website during the siege, saying, “they came to kill us and we killed them,” and referring to the police as “devils and demons.”
Links Suspected
Police began investigating links between the Trains and other possible terrorists, and in December 2023, a joint Queensland police and FBI operation arrested 60-year-old U.S. citizen Donald Day Jr.They alleged that between May 2021 and December 2022, Day sent the Trains multiple “Christian end-of-days” ideological messages.
Day then left a video reply which said, “Please, do what you must do, with determination in your hand and fury in your bellies ... I tell you, family, that those bastards will regret that they ever [expletive] with us.”
Four days after the shooting, he posted a video on YouTube entitled “Daniel and Jane” (the Trains’ middle names, under which they posted their material).
In that video, he stated, “[M]y brave brother and sister ... have done exactly what they were supposed to do, and that is to kill these [expletive] devils.”
The documents also allege that he posted a comment threatening the World Health Organisation’s director general, saying, “It is time to kill these monsters and any who serve them. Where are my kind?”
In January 2024, prosecutors also charged Day with illegal possession of a firearm and threatening FBI agents at the time of his arrest.
8 Officers Ready to Testify
With his trial due to begin in Arizona in April, his lawyers have asked the court to exclude evidence from any Australian officers, as well as restricting evidence about the Trains or the shooting.Eight Queensland police officers have provided statements to prosecutors and were prepared to give evidence during the trial.
“Evidence about a shootout with police in which police officers were killed—events that Mr. Day was not involved with—is highly inflammatory, overly prejudicial, and of little to no relevance to these proceedings,” their submission says.
“Without strict limits, Mr. Day will not receive a fair trial ... The Trains are responsible for the deaths of three people. Mr. Day is not.”
They say the trial should be confined solely to the actions of their client and not those “of people he never met who lived 8,000 miles away,” although they concede some evidence about the events at Wieambilla will be necessary for prosecutors to explain how Day came to the attention of the FBI.
However, that should be restricted to the evidence of a single Queensland police officer, who would be limited to testifying about a set of facts agreed to by both parties.
They point out that he is not accused of inciting, assisting, or conspiring with the Trains to commit murder.
They have asked that the application be heard urgently. A date is yet to be set.
