Even in Australia, Porepunkah is a town few would have heard of before this week. Fewer still could pronounce it.
Nestled at the base of densely wooded mountains in the Australian Alps, it is home to about 1,000 people and beloved for its wineries, bushwalking and peaceful atmosphere – something which has now been shattered.
Choppers whirr overhead. Kevlar-clad officers methodically patrol the town. Armoured vehicles roll down its streets. Porepunkah is now the centre of a massive manhunt for a heavily armed man that police allege murdered two of their own in cold blood.
Officers went to Dezi Freeman’s property on the outskirts of the rural Victorian town on Tuesday with a warrant to search it. They were met with gunfire before their alleged attacker – a “sovereign citizen” with a well-documented hatred of authority – vanished into nearby bushland.
The shooting – which appears hauntingly similar to an ambush of police in Queensland three years ago – has shocked the town and revived questions over how the country deals with growing sects of anti-government conspiracy theorists.
“This is exactly the sort of thing that we’ve been fearing,” says Joe McIntyre, who has spent years studying these groups in Australia.
Small community ‘rattled’
Police were clearly expecting that this wasn’t going to be a straightforward interaction. A detailed risk assessment had been conducted, and 10 officers – a show of force – were tasked with executing the search warrant, reportedly relating to a sex crimes investigation.
Among them was a local detective from a nearby town who was on the brink of retirement. Neal Thompson was selected for the job because he’d had previous dealings with the target and was thought to have built rapport with him, The Age newspaper reported.
Within minutes of arriving at the property, he was shot dead, alongside Senior Constable Vadim De Waart. Another unnamed officer was gravely injured and is recovering in hospital.
Mr Freeman escaped into thick tree cover on his property with several firearms, including, according to local media, an illegal homemade gun and at least one weapon stolen from the slain officers. He remains on the run.
Horror quickly echoed around the valley.
Holed up in the caravan park her family owns, Emily White’s voice choked up as she explained her fear and surprise.
“I got a knock on my door from one of our workers saying that there’s an active shooter. I said, ‘What? You’re lying, you’re joking’,” she told the BBC over the phone on Tuesday night.
“We’re such a small community, and we’ll leave our cars unlocked, and we’ll leave our front doors open. Nothing like this ever happens.”
Residents say it’s the kind of town where everyone knows everyone. So it didn’t take long for Mr Freeman – legally known as Desmond Filby – to be fingered as the alleged culprit.
Mark Simpson, who manages the local airfield, told the BBC he’d seen the 56-year-old around town and said ‘g’day’ a handful of times but had no inkling of his beliefs.
“The only sovereign citizen I heard of years ago was a guy in Western Australia… He had his own stamps and money,” he says.
Misty-Rose, who runs a business in town and didn’t want to give a last name, says there has long been a cluster living in the Porepunkah community – and many in town knew Mr Freeman was one of them.
Sovereign citizens are a type of anti-authoritarian conspiracists loosely dubbed pseudo-law believers: people who reject established government and law as illegitimate, justified by legal-sounding arguments that have no actual basis.
In practice, that can mean anything from refusing to register a car and hold a driver’s license to – in the case of Mr Freeman – trying to use their own asserted authority to arrest a magistrate in court.
Though Mr Freeman and his family seemed to be well integrated in the community, Misty-Rose says, he was also the subject of town whispers.
He was rumoured to live inside a bus parked on his block of land, and his arrest outside a courthouse in nearby Myrtleford several years ago – where he was protesting after his treason case against the state’s leader failed – had sparked chatter.
