Widow’s haunting triple-0 call for help – before her husband was brutally murdered by doomsday cult

A coroner has released chilling triple-0 audio of the moments before a man was murdered by his neighbours in a religiously motivated terrorist attack.

Alan Dare, 52, was one of three victims shot dead by deranged gunmen at a property in Wieambilla, in Queensland’s Western Downs region, in late 2022.

Mr Dare lived with his wife Kerry on the neighbouring property of Nathaniel, Stacey and Gareth Train.

In a triple-0 call, Ms. Dare tells the operator she hears “gunshots and black smoke” and smells “an electrical burning smell.”

Mr. Dare can be heard briefly in the background.

“There’s been … gunfire across the road for the last hour or so,” Mrs Dare says. “But there’s been two big bangs in the last 10 minutes. Really loud – no gunfire.”

Mrs Dare says there is a lot of smoke in the air, but the operator says they don’t need to look any further.

The five-week investigation into the Wieambilla massacre focuses on the deaths of Queensland Police officers Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold, Mr Dare and the three members of the Train family – Nathaniel, his brother Gareth and Gareth’s wife Stacey – on December 12, 2022.

Officers McCrow, 29, and Arnold, 26, were killed by the Train brothers after jumping the fence at the Wieambilla estate.

Two other officers – Keely Brough and Randall Kirk – survived.

Mr Dare, 58, was killed while investigating fires started by the trains. He lived on a property opposite theirs.

All three members of the Train family were killed later that night by highly trained Special Emergency Response Team (SERT) officers during a prolonged firefight.

Police on duty were conducting a welfare check on Nathaniel, a former NSW school principal who had been reported missing months earlier, but were ambushed by the family who were lying in wait.

The Trains followed an extremist Christian ideology called premillennialism, which believed that Jesus Christ would return to earth after a period of extreme suffering.

In the triple-0 report, released by the coroner’s court on Friday, Mrs Dare tells the operator that the fire does not smell like a grass fire.

POLAIR Vision has revealed the thrilling final moments during the shoot-out at Wieambilla

“Holy cow, it’s almost here… it’s getting really bad, holy shit,” she says as the black smoke continues to rise.

“We’ll have to go to the neighbors.”

Mrs. Dare tells the operator that her husband went out to investigate with another neighbor, Victor Lewis.

“I would definitely advise against it,” says the operator.

In the audio, she says her husband is “at his highest point.”

The operator tells her that the police are already on site for a job in the area and urges her to call back if anything more comes to light.

Mr Dare was filming when he was fatally shot while investigating the fires.

On Friday, Queensland Police Sergeant Andrew Gates also testified about the moment he collected the bodies of his fallen colleagues after they had been shot dead by trains.

He told the court he had volunteered to be part of the rescue team that recovered the bodies of officers Arnold and McCrow.

He admitted he didn’t want to, but said it was “what we did.”

The court was told the team drove to the address via Wains Rd. in a vehicle travelling at a ‘walking pace’.

Sergeant Gates explained that he felt the officers were caught in a “fatal funnel” due to the lack of cover.

He said he saw Officer McCrow in the driveway, about 500 feet away.

The team also shouted “colors” to Officer Brough as she hid in the grassland to see if she could hear the colors.

Sergeant Gates testified that he yelled at Officer Brough to stay at the tree line.

The last time he saw her colleague “running for her life, Glock in hand” was just before the team went in.

The court was told he then walked over to Officer McCrow’s body and nearly ripped her shirt off as he tried to pull her to safety using her vest.

Sergeant Gates said it appeared as if it had been removed.

“We got her in (the vehicle) … her head turned and I realized she was deceased,” Sergeant Gates said.

Toowoomba Chief Sergeant Christina Esselink also testified that she saw the first job when she was working in the Darling Downs town.

She was given permission to go to the forward command center, even though Wieambilla was not within her police district.

“I knew that the police had been shot at and that two officers were missing,” said Sergeant Esselink.

She explained that the court was told that “significant” resources would be needed to respond to the shooting, including air assets such as the Polair helicopter.

Sergeant Esselink said she had arranged for trained riflemen to come to Wieambilla and had tried to get the dog brigade involved.

The court was told that Sergeant Esselink used her car to block an open gate to the train yard, effectively isolating the gunmen on the property.

At that moment, she was shot by family members, forcing her to run out of the car to safety.

The court was told she saw Mr Dare’s body lying nearby and considered taking his body away.

“He had been murdered and there was a crime scene, there had been shots fired and gunfire, and we had nowhere to put (his body),” Sergeant Esselink said.

“I thought we were coming back for him… everything was hectic at that time,” she said.

The investigation is still ongoing.