Behaviour changed before shooting

COP killer Ricky Maddison’s behaviour changed in the leadup to killing police officer Brett Forte, and he was firing an automatic gun for months to attract attention, his best friend believes.

Sen Const Forte, a father of three, was gunned down by fugitive Maddison on May 29, 2017, after being led into an ambush on Wallers Rd in the Lockyer Valley.

Maddison was later killed by Special Emergency Response Team officers after a 20-hour siege in which he fired on police and the police helicopter.

Adam Byatt – who struck up his friendship with Maddison years earlier through chess games – said his friend had been living on his family’s property on Wallers Rd since January 2017.

Maddison had been couch surfing because he had no money, but didn’t want to admit he was broke, often too proud to accept money from friends.

He said Maddison was paying the Byatt family $100-150 a week to live on the 500-acre property which had a shed with a generator, cooktop stove and camp shower.

Locals had reported hearing automatic gunfire in the area and police in Gatton had been investigating, while officers attached to the Toowoomba tactical crime squad were separately looking for Maddison.

Mr Byatt said he didn’t know Maddison had the gun or had been firing it but was now of the belief he had been doing so to attract attention.

“They’re a hot round, they make a big bang,” he said.

“It (gunfire) reverberates through that valley.”

In the week before the ambush with police, Mr Byatt said he had taken Maddison some food his mum had made. His friend had become “more and more forlorn” and was “broken”, he said.

“He was increasingly not good,” Mr Byatt said.

“But I was under the impression he had some sort of stomach cancer or stomach problem because he was really crook.

“He told me, I don’t know if it was in the weeks before … he said ‘I’m not getting treatment anymore’. Sometimes I’d show up there and he could barely move.”

Maddison had given up on his business and spent all of his money contesting a domestic violence matter in the courts, which was discontinued but then pursued again by police after another incident with the woman.

Mr Byatt said he had no idea there was an arrest warrant out for Maddison and in his view he wasn’t “in hiding” as his key card was being used and the pair had also been to cafes in the region.

After hearing of a shooting in the area – but not realising Maddison was involved – Mr Byatt said he had been arrested by police at a roadblock as he tried to drive to the family property.

“I drove down there thinking of giving them (police) a mud map of where to find Rick so they don’t go charging in and him thinking the wrong thing,” he said.

The police had wanted to know how he contacted Maddison. “And I said well actually, I’ve got a phone down there that I let him use and I rang him off it, it just went straight to message,” Mr Byatt said.

Mr Byatt said once he knew the situation, he knew there was nothing that could save Maddison.

“It’s nice to romanticise that idea,” he said.

“As soon as I knew what the magnitude of it was, a few things fell into place. I’m like, he’s not coming out of this alive. He won’t allow it.”