The Squiz

Nearly a year on from the murders of Queensland police officers Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold and good samaritan Alan Dare at a rural property at Wieambilla in Queensland, officers from America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have arrested a man linked to the “religiously-motivated terrorist attack”. Queensland Police Assistant Commissioner Cheryl Scanlon yesterday said Donald Day from Arizona was indicted by a grand jury for interstate threats under US law, and that he has been remanded in custody.

How is he linked?

Let’s start at the beginning… The trio were shot and killed on 12 December last year – the police officers were ambushed as they visited the property as part of a missing person case. The tragedy was labelled as Australia’s first fundamentalist Christian terrorist attack. Husband and wife Gareth and Stacey Train and Gareth’s brother Nathaniel were killed after a 6-hour standoff with police, and it was later revealed the trio had planned the attack. And yesterday, Assistant Commissioner Scanlon said Gareth Train and Donald Day first connected via YouTube in May 2021. She said Day sent messages about Christian end-of-days ideology to Gareth and Stacey and allegedly made comments “inciting violence in connection to the incident at Wieambilla”.

So what happens now?

The FBI is investigating Day’s motivations, and Scanlon says Aussie authorities have “a long way to go” in identifying “any residual threats” posed to the community. That means they want to know if Day or the Trains were in contact with others here… And there’s another reason to mention the Wieambilla attack with the National Cabinet agreeing to introduce the National Firearms Register. The register was first agreed to 27 years ago after the Port Arthur Massacre but was never implemented. It will take about 4 years to get up and running, but it means the state/territory gun registers will be brought together into a national database. Noting the Wieambilla attack anniversary next week, Albanese says the decision “represents the most significant improvement in Australia’s firearms management systems in almost 30 years and will keep Australia’s first responders and community safer”.