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The first shooting was a mass shooting.

The siege consisted of the initial shooting, the one that killed the 2 officers, a neighbor and injured another, and the second shooting killed 3 more people. By the definition Misplaced Pages goes by, mass shootings are when 4 or more are shot excluding the perp, so shouldn't the initial attack be mentioned as a mass shooting and not an ambush? Mixed Biscuit (talk) 12:24, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Whether or not the incident is considered a mass shooting, that does not prevent it from being an ambush. Where is this Misplaced Pages definition of a mass shooting? WWGB (talk) 12:31, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Mass shootings and ambushes are non-mutually exclusive. The article Mass shooting states there is no consensus on the definition, but that the term has been used in some incidents with as few as three surviving victims, while others have required a minimum of five fatal shootings.Ypna (talk) 06:12, 14 December 2022 (UTC) incorrect; Brough was not injured.

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Who shot Alan Dare?

I may have missed definitive sourcing in all the media articles but I cannot find any official statement that the Trains shot and killed Alan Dare, the neighbour who came to investigate. The media reports seem to accept this as implicit but neither of the two spokesmen - the police commissioner and the police union leader - ever stated this directly, merely saying that he was shot in the back. Can anybody find a source that is not just a journalist?

This report quotes Dare's wife:

"Ms Dare told NCA NewsWire she was kept in the dark by police on what was unfolding and was left to endure a horrific wait for information about what had happened to her husband.

'They're not telling me anything and I don't know if they will tell me anything,' she said.

'I know that he's gone but I don't know who killed him.'

She also talks about her husband left for dead, his property being seized, and no effort made to contact next of kin. As one of the very few non-senior police sources for this incident, she is clearly not conforming to the careful phrasing and slanting being provided to the media. The two police who survived the shooting have, so far as I know, not spoken directly about the events to the media apart from an anodyne statement released through the union. --Pete (talk) 18:47, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

"The brothers are the offenders who police say shot and killed two armed officers and neighbour Alan Dare".

"Nathaniel Train ... , his brother and sister-in-law shot two Queensland police officers and a civilian dead in Wieambilla, police say. WWGB (talk) 06:26, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

I thought I had made it clear. I'm well aware of articles like that where no sources are given. If "police say" something, then just who and when and where are the police saying it? What exactly did they say? Do we have any specific person making this claim? As I say, there may be a definitive source; it's just that I haven't seen one and I've been paying close attention to this. We don't have a single eyewitness report of anything before the police counterattack. The closest we hve is the wife of Alan Dare and she is pretty scathing in her remarks about the police. The Australian attributes some information - about jumping the fence and the male cop driving away from his three comrades - to a "source close to the investigation".

Surely if the event occurred as described, then we would have the two surviving cops front and centre at press conferences? With the three residents dead, there is no need to be coy about evidence in an ongoing investigation. Instead the survivors, their immediate superiors, and all police in the region have totally clammed up apart from obviously prepared statements that contain no details.

I think that if we in wikivoice are going to say that specific named individuals killed other specific individuals, then we need to be pretty sure of our sources. I have no problems with saying that the Trains murdered the two police because there is really no alternative scenario that makes any sense. There are two dead police and one shot up police vehicle and it seems unlikely that they fell to gunfighting amongst themselves and blamed the situation on the innocent Trains who were quietly having a cup of tea. There seems to be sufficient evidence that the Trains were conspiracy theorists opposed to government especially in the form of the police, and they had come to the bizarre point where they were willing to shoot up anyone in a police uniform.

But for this neighbour, we have no details at all apart from the report - from whom? - that he was shot in the back, which in itself makes little sense. If he was approaching the property to lend a hand, then was he walking or driving backwards? If someone saw him shot in the back, then why do they not identify the shooter? If on the other hand that detail comes from an examnation of the body, then that is a different story.

More details are emerging. The police had called on the Trains previously. They had an arrest warrant for Nathaniel Train related to an illegal border crossing with multiple firearms. I don't think that we need be laying blame or making unsourced claims about the police handling of the situation but I do thnk that we can be careful with our wording if we do not have solid sourcing, especially when no eyewitnesses can be found willing to identify themselves as the source of what few details have emerged from the very top of the Queensland police tree. --Pete (talk) 10:05, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Surely an eyewitness would be a primary source, which is not our preferred source. Is there some specific reason why you think the ABC, SBS and 7 News are not reliable secondary sources when they say the Trains shot Dare?

The fact that he was shot in the back is unusual, but given that he was investigating the fire - so not necessarily approaching the Trains directly - it is plausible. The Trains had apparently "wounded and then fatally shot again at close range", so they evidently weren't "playing fair". Mitch Ames (talk) 10:49, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

It seems to me that Pete is hinting at a bizarre alternative universe where the cops shot Dare in the back! We have multiple reliable sources that report Dare being shot by the Trains, more than sufficient to pass the WP burden of evidence. Let's stick to the known facts as posted across the media. WWGB (talk) 11:27, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

"Bizarre"? The whole thing is bizarre. Weird new details keep on emerging. Apparently Constable Arnold was shot with a rifle bullet in the stomach that travelled up his spine and lodged in his neck, killing him instantly. That seems pretty bloody bizarre to me. The problem is that theee "multiple reliable sources" have all turned out to be effectively unsourced. None of these journalists link back to an eyewitness or an authority figure making a definite statement. I've asked a couple of times if you can find anything more definite than a journalist writing "police say". Not because I think they are lying but because we as an encyclopedia should go for the best possible source in this still developing story. I think at the very least we should be cautious in what we say in wikivoice as definite fact when we can't actually tie a claim back to a reliable source. (ETA. The article as it stands now seems reasonably well-founded.) --Pete (talk) 19:14, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

bullet in the stomach that travelled up his spine and lodged in his neck, killing him instantly. That seems pretty bloody bizarre to me. — The source you mention, the Daily Mail, is not considered reliable. Mitch Ames (talk) 03:05, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Just another magic bullet. WWGB (talk) 03:28, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that thought occurred to me as well. They eventually solved that puzzle. I dare say in due course we'll get more answers. Right now there are a few very odd things about this. Obviously the cops aren't being completely straight in their initial stories - as one expects when something goes wrong - for example the revelations that it wasn't just a missing person check out of the blue; they had a warrant for the guy's arrest on weapons and other charges and they had visited multiple times previously which is why they sent four cops in a coordinated operation. My experience in watching the Queensland Police since the days of Bjelke-Petersen is that when they promise an investigation to get to the facts, the report is never released if the police made mistakes. Of course police make mistakes; they are human, after all, and doing a difficult and dangerous job under pressure. I just wish they'd be more forthcoming about it. In the meantime we have an encyclopaedia to write and facts are our bread and butter. --Pete (talk) 10:38, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

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