Officer killed in shooting
POLICE late last night were negotiating with a gunman holed up in a farmhouse west of Brisbane after one their colleagues was shot dead during a dramatic car chase.
Senior Constable Brett Forte was killed and others received minor injuries in the pursuit after the suspect, Rick Maddison, evaded police at a traffic stop in the Lockyer Valley just before 2pm yesterday.
THE gunman who is suspected of killing policeman and father- of- two Brett Forte is a career criminal who was wanted by police when he allegedly opened fire on the officer with an automatic weapon.
The Toowoomba Tactical Crime Squad officer died yesterday afternoon after trying to pull over Rick Maddison, who got out of his vehicle and opened fire.
The shooting sparked a siege that lasted hours, with Maddison apparently heard laughing as he fired at the police helicopter from inside a shipping container.
It is understood Senior Constable Forte was shot when he tried to intercept Maddison’s car on Wallers Rd at Seventeen Mile north of Gatton in the Lockyer Valley shortly after 2pm.
Maddison is believed to have opened fire on the officer and his partner. They tried to reverse the police vehicle but it crashed and rolled off the road.
The gunman was believed to have continued to shoot at Sen- Constable Forte after the crash, before fleeing into bushland.
Police set up a large cordon, told residents to stay indoors, and sent the Special Emergency Response Team to the scene.
SERT officers arrived in an armoured vehicle as Maddison, who was believed to have holed up in the shipping container, continued to fire at the circling Polair helicopter.
Officers told residents stranded inside the cordon that Maddison had been seen by the police helicopter running on to acreage.
“He’s on a farm next to a dam, police told us,” resident Peter Hills said.
“They’ve got him surrounded and it’s going to be a long night.”
Resident Lisa Hayden watched as Sen- Constable Forte’s colleagues tried to resuscitate him.
“I saw a paddy wagon and they pulled a man out of the back seat and started to give him CPR in the drain,” she said.
Sen- Constable Forte was killed on the anniversary of the day Gold Coast detective Damian Leeding was shot in 2011.
Former deputy commissioner Ross Barnett was also shot and injured after trying to pull over an armed offender in Toowoomba on the same day in 1991.