One of the men who shot and killed two police officers and a member of the public on Monday in Wieambilla, Queensland, appears to have an extensive online history of paranoid, delusional posts on Australian conspiracy websites.
Gareth Train and his brother Nathaniel Train have been identified as the men shot dead after a six-hour siege on a rural property in Queensland’s Western Downs last night. An unnamed woman was also killed.
Few details have been released about the pair. Nathaniel Train is a former primary school principal who left work after saying he had a heart attack at his desk in August 2021, the ABC reported.
Nathaniel had been the subject of a missing persons report in NSW after last being seen in Dubbo in December 2021. Four Queensland police officers were sent to a house identified as being owned by Gareth Train and his wife Stacey Jane Train about a missing person report yesterday when they came under fire.
A prolific commenter on fringe Australian websites who went by “Gareth Train” mentioned details consistent with the shooter’s history.
The Gareth Train user claimed to live on a rural property in Western Queensland where they were homesteading, a term that means to build a self-sustaining lifestyle. They decried social media, believing it was used to brainwash people, but frequently posted on conspiracy forums and comment sections between 2020 and 2021.
The user claimed to have been “researching” since the 1990s and repeatedly mentioned the Port Arthur Massacre — sharing conspiracy theories about a false flag event used as an excuse to restrict Australia’s gun rights — as a turning point in their views.
Often quoting Bible verses, the account promoted a huge array of conspiracies about topics like COVID-19 vaccines, chemtrails, the CIA and its MKUltra program, the New World Order, the Illuminati, China, Satanic forces and various anti-Semitic concepts. It also espoused ideas and interacted with prominent Australian figures from the sovereign citizen movement, a group of people with a loose ideology based on rejecting the legitimacy of law and institutions. The account rejected QAnon and Donald Trump as “psyops” (short for psychological operations) run by nefarious forces.
In particular, the “Gareth Train” account seemed alarmed by COVID-19 restrictions and what was happening under “Dictator Dan” in Victoria.
“If you are a conservative, anti-vaxx, freedom lover, protester, common law, conspiracy talker, alternative news, independent critical thinker, truther, Christian, patriot etc etc expect a visit from these hammers – they are here to kill, maim and take you to re-education school,” they wrote.
The account repeatedly wrote about the police. It called them “corporate soldiers” who had opposed Australia’s freedom movement and claimed that any “good cops” were bullied out of the system.
The “Gareth Train” account also repeatedly foreshadowed their desire to take a stand up to their perceived oppressors.
“Know who you are and take action when the opportunity arises knowing you are in the right. Don’t fear death. Death comes to all of us. Don’t die old on your back wishing you had taken action. What is toxic is failure to act according to ones conscience,” they said.
