Police discover girl’s body in barrel after tipoff
A woman claims she saw ‘‘a dead arm’’ sticking out of a barrel when a man roared up in a black ute, pointed a shotgun at her and demanded to be let into her housing estate south of Brisbane.
Police found a teenage girl’s body inside a barrel in the back of a shot-up ute at The Lodge estate in Stapylton on Wednesday.
Officers are still hunting for the killer.
A resident of the estate said a tattooed, Caucasian man pulled up in a ute with the windows shot out and bullet holes through the bonnet, which was flipped up over the windscreen.
‘‘He pulled out a shotgun and said to me and my partner: ‘I’ll give you two grand if you let me in the gate right now,’ ’’ the woman, who did not want to be named, said. ‘‘We lifted up the gate and let him in.’’
As the car passed, she spotted a blue barrel in the tray with ‘‘an arm flapping out’’.
‘‘There was just the one barrel, it wasn’t massive either, it was only small. I just seen an arm, a dead arm,’’ she added.
Detectives are hunting for Zlatko Sikorsky, 34, and have warned the public not to approach him, saying they believe he has access to guns.
The drama began at a house in the Logan suburb of Buccan on Wednesday, where police were making inquiries into the disappearance of 16-year-old Sandgate girl Larissa Beilby.
Acting Detective Inspector Scott Furlong said yesterday Sikorsky and Beilby knew each other: ‘‘I don’t know the relationship. We know they’re associated, however we don’t know the exact relationship . . .’’
Sikorsky fled the Buccan prop- erty in a black ute but was tracked by police to The Lodge, where he dumped the car and then left in a Holden Commodore.
He has distinctive tattoos around his neck, and police believe he may still be travelling in the vehicle within the Logan or Gold Coast area.
Other residents have told of seeing the black ute coming in and out of the estate over the past fortnight.
Detectives say they’re still working to identify the victim. – AAP