Family was lured to their own execution: Police
POLICE will allege a family shot dead on a remote property had been lured to their deaths with the offer of discussing a long-running dispute over a fence boundary.
Darryl Young, who owns the property where three people were executed and a fourth wounded, has been charged with three counts of murder.
Married couple Mervyn, 71, and Maree, 59, Schwarz, and their son Graham Tighe, 35, were gunned down with a rifle at close range.
Ross Tighe, Graham’s brother and Maree’s son, was also shot in the stomach but fled the scene, driving 40km before phoning for help.
He underwent emergency surgery on Thursday night after being flown to Mackay Base Hospital.
He is reportedly well enough that he was able to speak to police.
Despite being neighbouring properties, it is a 45-minute drive from one house to the other and the driveway of Young’s property is 3km long. The area is inland from the Whitsundays in northern Queensland.
Greg Austin, the brotherin-law of Maree, said the neighbours had been arguing over where the boundary should be between their two farms for years.
He said the previous owners had also been in dispute with Mr Young.
“It (the dispute) has been going on for years, even with the people who were there before them,” Mr Austin said.
“You don’t really take much notice for those things and hope they sort themselves out. One bloke thought it was put up in the wrong place, it’s just ridiculous.”
Police locked down a massive area after the call came in from Mr Tighe.
“We had a small team of police who drove forward into the crime scene at that time not knowing if the armed offender was present, putting their lives at grave danger especially when the report was that people had been shot with a rifle,” Detective Inspector Tom Armitt said.
Police took five people who were on the Young property into custody for questioning but released four of them. Young, 59, was charged with three counts of murder.
He will appear in court on Monday August 8.
Inspector Armitt confirmed Young was known to police and would be the only person charged.
“What we do know is that all parties are neighbours, some conversation has occurred between the parties and resulted in a meeting up at the parties’ boundary line earlier
that morning when the incident occurred,” he said. “We understand that there was a conversation the night before that was the reason they met the next morning. What I can say is that there was an invitation for them to go there and discuss.”
Young is a longstanding resident of the Bogie area and the family is well known.
The property is littered with rusty vehicles and farm machinery.
It is more than 7700ha, or bigger than the European country of San Marino and the Vatican combined.
A “legal notice” posted on a fence warned entry to the property was by “invitation only” and cautioned against trespassing by “men, women, persons and entities including police/government/sheriff/ bailiff/process server/council/ private investigators/ corporations”.
A neighbour said: “Everyone knows Darryl but no one will say anything.”