‘HE STUCK A GUN IN MY BACK’
… THERE’S A MADMAN ON THE LOOSE. HE’S GOT A GUN’
SENIOR CONSTABLE JASON BROSNAN RECOUNTS HIS LIFEAND- DEATH STRUGGLE WITH A JEWEL THIEF IN 1999. BY SCOTT SAWYER
JASON Brosnan had two choices as he knelt down in a creek bed with a gun to his back. Behind him stood convicted master jewel thief Gillies Roger Pallas, holding a 22- calibre, semiautomatic pistol just to the side of Jason’s spine.
He remembered the words of his police academy trainer as he prepared for what was to come.
“I’m thinking he’s about to put a bullet in the back of my head,” he recalled.
His choices were to “have a dig” or hope Pallas would simply leave him alone.
The current Kirwan police station officer in charge, Senior Sergeant Brosnan was a 27- year- old constable with just more than a year’s experience when he went on what was a routine job on February 21, 1999.
He was relieving as a plain clothes officer in the Criminal Investigation Branch at Innisfail, after being sworn in as a Queensland policeman in December, 1997.
Sen- Sgt Brosnan and a group of detectives were headed to a Mena Creek property to investigate a report of stolen goods.
The Mena Creek Hotel had been broken into during a flood, with large amounts of alcohol and cigarettes stolen.
The culprits had to be local as floodwaters had cut off access to the town. The plan was simple. Execute a search warrant on Sunday morning, clock up about three hours’ overtime in the process, round up the stolen goods and get to a cricket match by lunchtime.
Everything was going to plan until they began a search of a van at the property.
Multiple identifications in the van began to ring some alarm bells as Sen- Sgt Brosnan and a colleague searched the van.
Inside the van lay Pallas, who also went by Gillies Roger Pallas among other aliases. He was at the rear of the van where Sen- Sgt Brosnan said police later found a loaded shotgun stashed.
When Pallas, now 55, left the back of the van and took off over an embankment nobody knew what the next few minutes held. Sen- Sgt Brosnan gave chase.
Zigzagging through trees then back on to a dirt road he could see Pallas about 40m ahead of him begin to scale a 5m- 6m high embankment.
As Sen- Sgt Brosnan kept running he saw Pallas return to the road about 5m in front of him. “I thought ‘ oh beauty, I’m on here’,” Sen- Sgt Bros- nan recalled. About 15m off the road into rainforest Sen-Sgt Brosnan tackled Pallas into a creek.
“I’m not happy, because I’m supposed to be playing cricket,” he said.
“As I’ve lifted him up he’s produced a pistol. I had no gun, no handcuffs, no anything. He told me to turn around … he then stuck a gun into the middle of my back.”
What happened over the next few seconds felt like an eternity.
Knowing where the gun was by the feel of the muzzle on his back, in one motion he said he could never recreate, Sen- Sgt Brosnan spun around, grabbed the gun and pulled it down to his side.
During the scuffle the gun went off, sending a bullet into his right thigh and diagonally across his leg, where it lodged in his calf muscle.
On all fours, with Pallas’s arm clutching the pistol jammed beneath him, Sen- Sgt Brosnan was “looking down at this hole in my leg”. More wrestling followed.
Sen- Sgt Brosnan twisted and pointed the gun up, getting a shot off, but it missed.
“He’s telling me, ‘ Don’t shoot, don’t shoot,’ and I’m telling him, ‘ Well let me f--ing go’,” he said.
He readjusted again and squeezed another shot off, but it missed.
Pallas then got Sen- Sgt Brosnan in a choke hold and as he began choking him out, forced his head under water in the creek bed.
“Somehow I sat up, turned, twisted and pushed him and I’m free and clear,” he recalled.
Kneeling in water, with the man who would eventually be jailed for 13 years for the incident, as well as the theft of more than $ 1 million worth of jewellery and explosives, Sen-Sgt Brosnan pointed the gun and pulled the trigger, “and it went ‘ click’ ”.
The gun was empty. Pallas had managed to release the magazine during the scuffle.
“I couldn’t believe it was empty,” Sen- Sgt Brosnan said.
Pallas struck back, hitting Sen- Sgt Brosnan in the head with a rock before grabbing the gun and pistol whipping him with the butt of the gun, splitting the rookie cop’s head and face open repeatedly.
Sen- Sgt Brosnan said Pallas kept yelling at him ‘ where’s your gun’ during the assault.
“I said ‘ I haven’t got one, f--- off’,” the 46- year- old police officer said.
He slumped to the ground
I’M THINKING HE’S ABOUT TO PUT A BULLET IN THE BACK OF MY HEAD
SEN-SGT JASON BROSNAN
feigning unconsciousness and Pallas took off, desperate to remain a free man. As Sen- Sgt Brosnan went to walk off his shot leg gave way so he started to crawl the two to three metres back up the creek bed.
“I can see blood just dripping out of me head,” he said.
“I remember crawling thinking ‘ god, a little bit longer, little bit longer’.”
He made it to a star picket at the top of the creek bed as a light, misty rain began to fall.
His yells for help, which had echoed up and down the creek, were suddenly able to be pinpointed atop the creek and his partner found him.
“I’ve been shot, there’s a madman on the loose. He’s got a gun,” Sen- Sgt Brosnan remembered telling his partner. “We had no idea he ( Pallas) was there ( at the property).”
Shock had started to set in as he was taken to hospital where a South African doctor experienced in treating bullet wounds told him it had been a “one in a million wound”.
The bullet had missed his knee, ligaments and importantly, the femoral artery, which if struck, would’ve caused Sen- Sgt Brosnan to bleed out within minutes. Instead he was back on operational duties 28 days later after rehabilitation.
While he was in hospital Special Emergency Response Team officers nabbed Pallas, who was holed up in another Mena Creek property.
Detectives made a highly visible entry, which sent Pallas running into the arms of waiting SERT officers who had surrounded the home.
Pallas was jailed for 13 years for the attack on Sen-Sgt Brosnan, as well as his role in a spate of jewellery heists and the theft of plastic explosives.
Sen- Sgt Brosnan said he’d been wanted on warrants for failure to appear in courts in Rockhampton, Townsville and Cairns.
He said Pallas had been a professional cat burglar who targeted jewellery stores by disabling their alarm systems.
He stole jewellery, melted down the gold and sold off the gems and stones individually.
“He was a very well organised criminal,” Sen- Sgt Bros- nan said.
Sen- Sgt Brosnan received a Queensland Police Valour Award and an Australian Bravery Medal for his efforts.
Pallas, who was in custody on other matters, faced Rockhampton Magistrates Court in November 2015, facing 57 charges in relation to a police raid on a Struck Oil property dubbed ‘ Aladdin’s Cave’ in 2014.
Police alleged the 36ha property housed a cache of stolen goods including 60 cars, a bobcat, motorhome and more and Pallas, along with two others, were hit with a total of 159 charges.