|
MELBOURNE: A good Samaritan who tried to
rescue a woman being dragged by her hair on a busy Melbourne street
was shot dead Monday and two other people were wounded when her
attacker opened fire, police said.
Police have launched a massive
manhunt to find the killer who started shooting in the city’s
central business district during morning rush hour.
Witnesses said the man, a
43-year-old lawyer, was one of two men who rushed to help the young
woman when they saw a man dragging her out of a taxi.
“She was screaming and a guy
had her by the hair,” Ross Murchie told national radio.
“The couple of bystanders went
over to ask what was happening. He let go of her hair, pulled out a
gun and shot them all.”
Police praised the dead man,
saying his last act was one of extreme bravery.
“It’s a tragic, tragic set of
circumstances and it does appear as though he’s been in the wrong
place at the wrong time and has gone to the assistance of a
female,” Detective Inspector Stephen Clark said.
Police said the killer had been
involved in a violent scuffle at a nearby nightclub shortly before
the shooting which they believe stemmed from a domestic incident.
“It does appear that there was
a relationship between the female and the male suspect and certainly
we’re not looking that it’s a random act, certainly not
gang-related—it appears as though it’s a domestic-related
incident,” Inspector Glenn Weir said.
The 24-year-old woman was
fighting for her life in hospital while the second man who went to
her aid was in a critical condition.
Witness Zali Nash told ABC radio
the gunman was “as cool as a cucumber” as he shot the victims.
“He just went bang, bang, bang,
there was no mucking around,” she said. “There were five shots
fired and the people went straight down to the ground. There
wasn’t even a scream, just a whimper.”
Another witness, who watched the
incident from his office building, said the killer left the scene
unhindered. “He just walked off,” the man told Channel Nine
news. “It was like you were on a movie set.”
Police locked down the area,
evacuating office buildings, to track the killer and they later
found a handgun and a dark jacket at a construction site, which they
said they were confident belonged to the gunman.
In recent years Melbourne has
experienced a bloody tit-for-tat gangland war, which began in the
late 1990s and has claimed 29 lives, including several people shot
in public.
 --AFP
|
