TELEVISION
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We break into our regular program to report that there has been a shooting during the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Reports are sketchy, however it is believed that there was a gunman and that a number of people have been shot while the parade was in progress in Oxford Street. A crime scene has been established and a whole block of Oxford Street, west of Taylor Square and Taylor Square itself, has been cordoned off by the authorities. Everyone has been cleared out of the area and it is impossible at this stage to get a clear picture of what has happened because all media have been excluded until the police determine if there were other shooters and whether it might have been a terrorist attack. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the shooting. It is believed that the shooter died at the scene from multiple bullet wounds. It is uncertain at this stage how many people have been shot and if anyone else is deceased. As soon as we learn more, we will bring it to you. We now take you back to The Biggest Loser.
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We now cross to our Eye-in-the-sky for this exclusive report. Are you there, Kent?
I am here Jacki and we are hovering right above Taylor Square and, I have to say, it looks like the aftermath of a war zone down there. Whoa, whoa, the ABC chopper, Ace, the ABC chopper. Christ, that was close. Er, sorry, Jacki. It’s crawling with choppers up here. Everybody and his pooch is trying to get a shot of what is happening down there on the ground. OK, OK, we’re just manoeuvring around and then we’ll try to get you that live shot. In the meantime, it appears pretty clear that a whole block of Oxford Street is in total lockdown. People seem to have scattered in both directions away from the scene. They seem to have just left all the floats and a plethora of decorations where they were when the shooting started and just ran away from the carnage. I can see thousands milling around on the western side of the barricades in Oxford Street. They all look like penned-in cattle, trapped by the buildings and police vehicles. The police have formed a roadblock at the end of Oxford Street and I don’t think that they’re letting anyone out. There is also a huge crowd on the eastern side of the police barriers, east of Taylor Square. They appear to be penned in by the police as well. I’m not sure what the authorities are doing. Maybe they are looking for terrorists and they don’t want anyone to get away. There must be at least a few thousand there. The only people moving inside the cordoned-off area appear to be … here we go … are you getting the picture now, Jacki? Over.
Yes, clear as a bell, Kent. Thank you.
It’s a shocking scene down there, Jacki. There seem to be hundreds of heavily- armed paramilitary police in the cordoned-off area and dozens of emergency vehicles of all types. As you can see on your screens, it is a sea of flashing lights.
What are those orange rectangles, Kent? Are they bodies?
Your guess is as good as mine, Jacki, but if they are covered-up bodies, there are at least a couple of dozen of them scattered all over Oxford Street. It looks like a massacre down there, Jacki, a bloody massacre. We can see a break in the barriers where ambulances are coming and going. My guess is that they’re taking most of the wounded to St. Vincent’s Hospital, which is just a couple of blocks away. There are people lying bleeding on the ground everywhere, Jacki, and now I can see doctors in their white coats getting out of the ambulances and running over. I can see doctors running down the street from the hospital, Jacki. They must have heard about the shootings and just taken off. I can see them tending to many of the injured where they lie.
We have to watch it up here, Jacki, because it’s dark and every bloody chopper in the city wants a piece of the same airspace.
Try to hang in there, Kent, and keep giving us those great pictures.
Will do, Jacki, will do. There might be as many as fifty people injured or dead down there, Jacki. I doubt that just one shooter could have done all this, especially with the huge police presence. There must have been multiple shooters. Some of them could still be hiding in the surrounding buildings, is my guess, Jacki. This thing isn’t over by a long shot. It’s developing the odour of a carefully-planned terrorist attack if you ask me, Jacki … OH MY GOD NOOOOO!!! NOOOO! OHHH … MY … GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!
What happened, Kent? Get the camera on it …
Back up, Ace, fucking back up, oh no, OH MY GOD! Jacki. We’ve just had a mid-air right in front of us … we’ve been hit by something, I think it was a piece of rotor blade, Jacki … we’re still flying … are we still flying, Ace? … We’re still flying, Jacki … oh my God, the ABC and the SBS choppers have had a mid-air right in front of us and I’m watching them spiralling down, Jacki …
We’re not getting any pictures, Kent, can you give us some pictures.
OK, how’s that? Ricky fell on his face when we got hit by the flying debris, but he’s up and shooting now … are you getting the shots?
We got them now, oh my GOD Kent … OH MY GOD!!! OK, I’m witnessing … the choppers have just crashed into the ground and exploded … OH MY GOD … one crashed into the middle of the crowd just west of the cordoned … OH MY GOD NO!!! … The other one just crashed and exploded east of Taylor Square barricades dead centre of the crowd, Jacki … God help us … the people, Jacki, the humanity, they were all penned in like cattle, they had nowhere to go, and the helicopters spiralled out of the sky and exploded right in the middle of all the people, Jacki, oh my GOD … there were two huge explosions … oh my GOD … I can see dozens, no, hundreds of people on fire, running on fire, Jacki … this is the biggest … this is indescribable … oh the mass of humanity … oh … and now they’re stampeding, everyone is panicking and stampeding … the buildings are catching fire Jacki, the buildings JACKI, either side of the explosions, THEY’RE ALL CATCHING FIRE, JACKI … and all the floats … everything is burning, Jacki, everything is on fire, GOD HELP US, GOD HELP US huh huh huh OH MY GOD, JACKI, PEOPLE ARE BURNING, HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE ARE ON FIRE, JACKI … THE HUMANITY … AND ALL THE BUILDINGS, JACKI, OXFORD STREET IS AN INFERNO … JACKIIIIIIIIIIIIII …
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It has now been three days since the Oxford Street disaster has happened. It began with a senseless, crazed killing by a lone gunman. After three days, smoke still rises from the ashes of what was once The Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. The tragedy has devastated the whole global gay and lesbian community. Someone from almost every country in the world died three nights ago. Services will be held for the dead on the same day all around the globe. That day, which is still in the planning stages and will be announced as soon as a decision is made, will be called, forever more, Global Rainbow Day. SBS will bring you a 24-hour live coverage of the services around the globe, beginning with the first Rainbow Service at The Pool of Reflection in Hyde Park. Protests by the military have been thoroughly denounced as homophobic and highly offensive, as well as, it was adjudicated, illegal. The ashes of the dead will be sprinkled in the pool at the end of the ceremony.
The injunction preventing SBS from televising the recording of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras still stands. SBS is thus unable to transmit the program in full until further notice. The Police authorities have claimed that the recorded material constitutes evidence in a homicide and have confiscated it until further notice stating that to show the recordings publicly would be highly prejudicial to the case. SBS intends to appeal against the injunction.
Now to the dead. As of last correspondence with the authorities the count is twenty dead and twenty-three injured in the initial shootings. In the subsequent helicopter disaster, there were one thousand nine hundred and forty-seven incinerated or crushed to death in the panicked stampede. There were another two thousand one hundred and twenty-three that sustained a whole spectrum of injuries. As we all know, Hyde Park was converted into one giant outdoor hospital with the military providing tents and the majority of the other infrastructure required for such a large disaster.
The Premier declared Oxford Street a disaster area, releasing emergency funds, which were desperately needed for relief operations. He said that the Oxford Street disaster gave the state authorities a great opportunity to fine-tune their response techniques in the event of future calamities.
Now to the footage. After intense negotiations with authorities, SBS has managed to acquire fifty-two seconds of footage of the original shooter. Now, before we show the footage, we are required, as per our agreement with the state police and the coroner, to request that any person who recognises the shooter, and had seen him any time up to two weeks prior to the massacre, to get in contact with the Special Task Force, Darlinghurst Police, and submit their information for possible future evidence. SBS was instructed to say that to withhold such information could be construed in the future as aiding and abetting in a felony and the offenders could be charged under federal law. The authorities would like SBS to convey to the public that they are searching for the motive that triggered the individual-in-question into action. The Police would also like to convey to the public that, regrettably, all of the eyewitnesses to the shootings were either incinerated in the infernos or crushed to death in the subsequent panicked stampede.
You will notice that the footage released for transmission has no sound. That is because the authorities deemed the transmission of the soundtrack to be prejudicial to the case. Video technicians at SBS, some of the best in the world I might add, have performed a closely-detailed, forensic analysis of the footage allowed us, and have unearthed some intriguing detail, which may or may not be of relevance to the shooting or the character of the individual. I might say, if I may, that some of the results of our forensic analysis may be quite revelatory. I will say no more about it now because I do not want to spoil the show. I might also add that the footage you are about to see is an SBS exclusive that is being aired for the first time anywhere in the world tonight.
It is our intent to first play the footage through at normal speed. We will then review the film at different speeds and use digital enhancement techniques in our detailed analysis. I must warn viewers that the footage is of an extremely graphic nature. It is absolutely essential that children under the age of fifteen do not watch. That is why we are playing it so late at night. The scene depicts two men being fatally wounded. One suffers a catastrophic head wound while the other receives three shots to the body and one to the head. The footage allowed us by the authorities is all in tight zoom with only the shooter and his victim in the frame. The officers that fired the four shots that disabled and ultimately killed the shooter are not visible in this footage. As a matter of interest, the footage was shot by a camera that was located directly across the street from the incident and elevated ten feet on a scaffolded platform. It is considered fortuitous that the cameraman instinctively zoomed in on the shooter as soon as he slipped under the barricade. The cameraman stated that it was the bright-red cap on the shooter’s head that initially caught his attention.
We will first roll the footage through at normal speed without comment. Then we will play it in slow motion and provide a running commentary as we do so. We apologise for the graphic nature of the footage. OK, let’s roll it.
Now, let’s roll it again in slomo.
We see the shooter slip under the barrier right behind his victim, who is a police sergeant on duty. We see the shooter step right in front of the victim. Although we cannot see the shooter’s mouth, we believe that he says something to his victim and the victim utters something very brief in return. We see the shooter withdraw a concealed firearm from his shoulder bag, bring it up to the officer’s head, firmly holding it in both hands, and without delay pull the trigger, inflicting a catastrophic head wound to the officer who almost immediately falls dead to the ground. We then see the shooter look into the spectators, then half turn and look semi-across the street. Suddenly he looks at his left hand and notices that his middle finger has been shot off, it is assumed by one of the other officers on duty. The shooter then appears to get hit in the left shoulder, which causes him to spin around and face the camera. He then appears to recognise someone on the other side of the street. He appears to call out their name. We believe that our forensic team knows what that name was. He is then hit in the side, then the chest and finally in the head, causing him to drop backwards onto the road, it is assumed either dead or not far from it. That is where the footage ends.
We apologise again for the graphic nature of the footage, however in view of the extreme carnage that this one incident triggered, we believe that we are justified in showing it.
Now, the first and most important fact that emerges out of the footage is that the shooter only fired one shot. Twenty additional people, made up of marchers, spectators and two other police officers, died from bullet wounds sustained during a frenetic period of gunfire lasting not much more than roughly twenty seconds. We at SBS believe that possibly as many as a dozen firearms were involved in these shootings.
Our weapons expert identified the handgun in the shooter’s hands as a .44 Magnum. He also surmised that the bullet used was of a hollow-point design due to the extremely explosive nature of officer’s head wound.
Our forensic team uncovered some very interesting evidence in the video.
One - The red cap worn by the shooter will be very familiar to anyone that has ever read Catcher in the Rye, written by the reclusive author, J. D. Salinger.
Two - Using digital enhancement we can see that there is a Penguin copy of Catcher in the Rye in the back pocket of the shooter. Fortuitously, the back of the shooter’s shirt was stuck behind it. The top of the book is red. Although the police have not released any information regarding the shooter, as of yet, SBS believes that when they do, they will confirm that the shooter carried Catcher in the Rye to a premeditated murder. The significance of this is that this has happened before. Mark David Chapman, who shot John Lennon, was found with the book in his possession when he committed the crime. John Hinkley, Jr. who shot, but did not kill, US President Ronald Reagan had the book in his hotel room. And Robert John Bardo carried the book when he murdered Rebecca Schaeffer in her apartment in Hollywood. Conspiracy theorists also associate Lee Harvey Oswald, the man widely believed to have assassinated John F. Kennedy, with the novel. And now we have one more. We are unable to give you his name because it has not yet been released.
We do know the deceased officer’s name, however, because with digital enhancement we can read it off the nametag pinned to his chest. It is Sergeant Allan Baxtre, and we wish to send our condolences to all his family and friends.
Finally, we have consulted a lip reader to tell us what the shooter calls out to someone he sees in the crowd across the street. Clearly, as you can see in this ultra-slow- motion segment, the shooter recognizes a person in the crowd. This person is never seen. So, who was he calling out to? We believe that we have a name through the expertise of our lip reader. Now, watch his mouth as we play the segment back a few times. Now say, Phoe…be, Phoe…be, Phoebe. We believe that the shooter called out to a woman and that her name was Phoebe. We also believe, by the look in his eyes, that they made eye contact. Who is this mystery woman? What role did she have to play in the shootings? And could there have been some kind of conspiracy? So far, we do not know anything because we have found no one who can remember seeing her. If you believe that you might know who this Phoebe was, please get in touch with us through our SBS links.
That is where we will wind up tonight’s report. We will continue our investigations and will bring you further developments as soon as they come to hand. Good evening.
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