Let’s first start with our review on this website of what happened leading up to Julian Knight’s short shooting spree at passing Hoddle Street traffic on the Sunday night of 9th August 1987…
So, why was Hoddle Street his target for his shooting spree of random civilian innocent strangers?
(1) Note: we review his State of Mind and his Access to an Arsenal in separate connected webpages. [TBA]
(2) Hoddle Street is situated a conveniently a close 50 metre walkable distance from where Julian Knight lived temporarily at the time with his mother in nearby Ramsden Street Clifton Hill in inner north-east Melbourne in the state of Victoria in Australia.
(3) Julian Knight was a local there before and after his time at Duntroon. It was immediately in the days after he had been forcibly discharged from Duntroon and from the Army altogether for his retaliatory knifing of RMC senior cadet bully Philip Reed. Julian’s father had been divorced from his mother and was living in distant Townsville (far north Queensland) some 2500 km away serving as a training officer in the Army.
(4) Hoddle Street being so close, would have had traffic very audible from his mother’s house, especially on a busy Sunday night. It is a major arterial road (north-south) connecting to busy nearby arterial roads High Street heading north, Heidelberg Road heading east, the Eastern Freeway, Melbourne CBD and southward that name changes to historic Punt Road across the Yarra River. It is a busy thoroughfare.
(5) Hoddle Street where it intersects with Ramsden Street would have much passing traffic on a busy Sunday night. So it would audibly and visually resemble a video game of moving targets from side to side in both directions. Perhaps like some carnival shooting gallery.
(6) Julian Knight was familiar with Hoddle Street and the immediate surrounding area. His car had been recently vandalised by senior cadets and had become undriveable, so he had gained familiarity of walking the surrounding nearby streets, such as to and from the closest local pub, The Royal Hotel, on the corner of Spensley and Berry Streets in Clifton Hill (image below). This is where he had been drinking heavily just that same evening prior.
(7) Julian also momentarily devised a back up escape plan – his girlfriend lived relatively about 300 metres close by in McKean Street in Fitzroy North on the other side (west) of Hoddle Street, where at a pinch he could hide out from a police search (this in his psychotic mind state of the moment). Indeed, Julian was actually caught by police out of ammunition crouched behind a low brick wall in laneway off McLean Street between houses numbered #227 and #241 (image below), whilst trying to get to his girlfriend’s home.
[NOTE: Cynically, in hindsight we ponder that had his car not been vandalised by the bully senior cadets at RMC Duntroon just weeks prior, Julian Knight could have vented his spleen by arming himself to the teeth and instead of taking out innocent civilian strangers along Hoddle Street, taking out his vengeance by driving back in June 1987 back up to Canberra and paying this same cadets a payback visit in lead.
It’s a 660 km drive on a freeway and overnight do-able, albeit still intoxicated. So, delivering a 6am reveille of a different louder tone. Julian had more than 12o rounds, so no more of the same Kokoda Company senior cadets who would have still been there before graduation!
No innocent civilians thus killed, and instead (probably shot dead) yet becoming a legendary contemporary Ned Kelly (1854-1880)!
Ned a persecuted young man (hanged at aged 25) of a perceived lower class (Irish) retaliating violently against a persistently unjust and bullying authority (English Police).]
(content pending)