The family who killed three people in rural Queensland were “psychotically driven” to a fatal shootout with police as they saw arrest as worse than death, a coroner has heard.
Consultant forensic psychiatrist Andrew Aboud gave evidence today at the inquest into the December 12, 2022 shootings at Wieambilla that claimed six lives.
Aboud said the shooters, Gareth Train and his wife Stacey and brother Nathaniel, died from “victim precipitated suicide”, commonly called “suicide by cop”, when they opened fire on heavily armed police.
“It was underpinned by their delusional thinking. Their intentions at the time were not to be apprehended by police, that would be a fate worse than death and in fact worse than anything they could have imagined,” Aboud said.
He said his conclusion from reviewing vast amounts of evidence and communications was the Trains were suffering from “shared psychotic delusion” or “folie à trois” which was led by Gareth Train as the “primary” sufferer.
Nathaniel and Gareth Train had earlier in the day shot dead Constables Matthew Arnold and Rachel McCrow during an ambush of four junior officers sent to the Trains’ rural property to serve an arrest warrant.
An unknown member of the Train family then fatally shot neighbour Alan Dare before specialist police with armoured vehicles and helicopters entered their 100-acre bushland block west of Brisbane.
Aboud said one thing that could have caused the Trains to flee rather than fight would have been a belief their religious salvation would come at a date in early 2023.
“They might have seen a possibility to reach their original primary destination which was the forecast date in early 2023 that they believed they would reach religious salvation through the second coming of Christ,” Aboud said.
State Coroner Terry Ryan heard that Gareth Train likely suffered from a delusional disorder in which he adopted increasingly bizarre beliefs and would not have been convinced otherwise by logic or argument from close friends and relatives.
Aboud said Gareth Train’s move to a remote property at Wieambilla was the point where he had “gone down the rabbit hole” and his long-term interests in guns, bodybuilding and military history to turn into delusions of being personally targeted by governments and secret societies.
Ryan heard the increased isolation at Wieambilla likely caused Gareth Train’s pre-existing belief the moon landings were fake and the Port Arthur massacre was a “false flag” staged event to justify gun buy-backs to be expanded into a wide range of conspiracy theories.
Investigating officers found videos at Wieambilla of Gareth Train using firearms to shoot at planes flying over his property, accusing them of being from the spy agency ASIO.
Aboud said Gareth Train thought ASIO and defence contractor Raytheon were trying to use “chemtrails” from private jets to poison him with neurological and chemical weapons.
“The beginning of COVID was incorporated into this. (The belief) it was used to get people mass vaccinated and to change people’s DNA,” Dr Aboud said.
He said Nathaniel Train travelled to Wieambilla in January 2021 and his brother presented his “grand opus” that a variety of political and religious conspiracies were secretly connected.
“The great deception has begun… This is all Satan’s mindf— game and the choice is a free will one,” Gareth Train said in a message to his younger brother.
Stacey Train would later send private messages to her friends describing how the couple was being monitored by the government and there was a war going on in heaven between good and evil.
“I know it sounds nuts,” Stacey Train said.
Dr Aboud said it was possible the Trains could have been found unfit to stand trial if they were apprehended instead of being killed by specialist police.
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