Knight Tries to Evade Capture
On the night of the Hoddle Street Shooting Spree, the shooter was arrested within 45 minutes of starting shooting spree. He was found by a Victoria Police patrol search for the then unknown ‘active shooter’ in the adjacent inner Melbourne suburb of North Fitzroy situated just 700m west of where the shooting spree had started.
The route that Julian Knight had taken on foot since departing his mother’s home at 6 Ramsden Street in Clifton Hill (below map bottom right) was initially to his chosen darkened gun-pit on the eastern side of Hoddle Street beside the railway line near the corner of Ransden Street. It is from this location that for about 20 minutes he executed his random shooting spree at passing traffic on Hoddle Street at around 21:30 hrs.
Once police had responded (within 10 minutes by 21:40hrs) and had started engaging by 21:45hrs), Knight quickly exited his gun-pit position in order to avoid being cornered by arriving police expected to encircle his position [Infantry tactics]. Knight left behind both his now emptied .22 calibre Ruger model 10/22 semi-automatic rifle and emptied 12-gauge 8-shot Mossberg pump-action shotgun. He took with him his still-loaded 7.62mm calibre M14 semi-automatic military rifle. He also stashed a spare 7.62mm round in the front right pock of his jeans as a last ditch solution if he had to take his life to avoid capture by ‘the enemy’.
Proposed Scenario:
Knight had lived in nearby for some time so he knew there immediate area intimately.
Once police arrived on the scene shortly afterwards, Knight ran with just his loaded M14 assault rifle back under the rail underpass at Clifton Hill station the north up quite John Street, under the Heidelberg Road bridge along the footpath following the railway line northward for about 400 metres and right past the Clifton Hill Hall then left under the railway bridge heading west along the Merri Creek trails wand under High Street bridge. This would have been when he shot up at the police helicopter’s search light. Knight then would have crossed High Street and into Brennand Street then backtracking south along McKean Street in adjoining Fitzroy North. This was where his girlfriend lived, so where he hoped that he could evade the police searching for him. McKean Street is also tree-lined and leafy, so providing further cover from the searching police helicopter.
At the time of the shooting spree, the police did not know who they were looking for, except some an erratic indiscriminate shooter killing motorists travelling along Hoddle Street. So in his desperate bid now to evade police, Knight’s thinking to hide out in a friend’s house on the other side of Hoddle Street well away from his initial shooting ‘foxhole’ would have seemed to make a sensible ‘safe house’.
But he was spotted by a police patrol along McKean Street carrying his now empty M14 – an image must have stood out to the police searching in their patrol car. The helicopter crew would have communicated sighting the shooter heading north along the railway line north of Heidelberg Road, so a westerly search would have been undertaken. Knight never made it to his girlfiend’s place and was quickly arrested. This all happened in just 45 minutes from the time Julian left his mother’s home to the time of his arrest in a laneway off McLean Street.
Knight tactically jogged northward using the darkened cover of the shadows of bushland reserve along the Merri Creek and then turned westward across High Street taking a shot at police before getting to McKean Street, where his girlfriend lived presumably as a hideout to try to evade capture. It was now 22:13 hours, just three quarters of an hour before he had commenced his shooting spree on Hoddle Street traffic near the Clifton Hill railway station.
Knight was spotted by two police officers, Constable John Delahunty and Constable Ralph Lockman, who immediately gave chase in their police car. As they bore down on him, Knight ducked into a lane-way, turned around and fired his last ten rounds at the police car as it stopped in the middle of the road facing the lane-way.
Delahunty, who was driving the police car, received minor shrapnel wounds to the face and left hand as he and Lockman tumbled out of the car with their revolvers drawn. The police car’s headlights were on high beam facing the entrance to the laneway, which was also lit up by a nearby street light.
It was during this escape phase that Knight shot at and hit the overhead police helicopter’s fuselage as its spot light was being trained on him. Knight, in his delusionally drunken-adrenaline fuele state of mind, presumed that he was about to be ‘taken out’ by ‘the enemy’ Victoria Police Special Operations Group (SOG) sniper out of the police helicopter.
Compare here police helicopter sniper scene of Rambo in the Hollywood film First Blood of 1982. This very same film was replayed on VHS videocassette recorder to off-duty officer staff cadets in the Kokoda barracks recreation room at RMC Duntroon at the time Julian Knight was an Army officer staff cadet in early 1987.
Both the bush reserve along Merri Creek was not lit and the northern end of McKean Street was poorly lit with a side tree-lined reserve along its western side that provided Knight with darkened cover from being detected. McKean Street in Fitzroy North is adaccent to Clifton Hill and the street runs more or less parallel to Hoddle Street.
However, a patrolling police car (Constables John Delahunty and Ralph Lockman) guided by the police helicopter radio siting shortly afterwards spotted Knight running along the footpath heading in a south-westerly direction on the western side in McKeen Street. So they gave chase at speed with high-beam on and sirens blaring. Knight came across a side laneway (historically used for septic night-carts) on his right off McKean Street, so quickly took cover behind a low brick wall just inside the laneway.
The police spotted his location and so the driver trained his headlights toward the laneway. Knight responded by emptying the remaining M14 rounds of his last magazine at the police car.
See map of Knight’s route on foot below.
As Delahunty and Lockman took up positions behind their police car and called upon Knight to surrender, Knight squatted down beside a low brick wall and searched his pockets vainly for his “suicide” bullet.
Knight Surrenders to Police
Once Knight realised that he had lost his suicide bullet, he decided to immediately surrender to the armed police prepatred to shoot to kill him. He leaned out into the headlight beams and dropped his now empty M14 on the ground. He then slowly stood up with his hands in the air. When he was fully upright, Delahunty stepped out from behind the rear of the police car and fired a shot at him.
Knight was not hit but he ducked back down behind the low brick wall. As Delahunty and Lockman again called on him to surrender he yelled back “Don’t shoot! I’m coming out!” He again rose up with his hands in the air before walking out onto the street where he was arrested by Delahunty and Lockman. It was 10:16 pm Sunday night 9th August 1987, just 46 minutes after Knight had fired his first shot back at Hoddle Street outside the Clifton Hill railway station.
Numerous other police officers arrived at the arrest scene, and after a short, initially violent, interrogation (by officers wanting to know where his accomplices were, Knight was driven in an unmarked police car to the St Kilda Road Police Complex by Homicide Squad Detective Senior Constable Richard McIntosh, Detective Senior Constable Kim Cox and Constable Robert Kovacs.
That laneway location off Knight’s arrest is situated between 227 and 241 McKean Street in Fitzroy North.
The apple did not fall far from the tree
An observation upon reflection and of course in hindsight after subsequent research and analyses, it has become evident in more ways that one that this apple did not fall far from the tree.
Knight’s family home was located in Ramsden Street in Clifton Hill, which was just 200m from where Knight dressed into dark clothing and armed himself with his own three long arms plus ammunition all in a gun bag, and proceeded setup in the shadows on the Hoodle Street verge just outside Clifton Hill Railway Station. Then he started shooting indiscriminately at traffic along Hoddle Street. Knight was found and arrested by a Victoria Police patrol search for the then unknown ‘active shooter’ in the adjacent inner Melbourne suburb of North Fitzroy, just 700 meters west of where the shooting spree had started, and just 900 metres from his family home.
Geographically, Merri Creek is a sizeably long creek that has its headwaters situated about 60km to the north outside Melbourne outside the village of Heathcote Junction and the creek flows southward through Clifton Hill then into the Yarra River just below the famous Dights Falls near Yarra Bend. Notably, Merri Creek is just 200 metres east of Pentridge Prison, and the now disused prison is situated just 6 km to the north of where Julian started his shooting spree. So he ended in a maximum security prison that happened to be just 6 km to the north of where Julian lived.
Further along this observation, Julian Knight’s family had resided in the Melbourne suburb of Laverton during a substantial part of his upbringing. This was because his military father, a Captain in the Australian Army and an educator of soldiers had been posted to Point Cook Air Force Base. Laverton was about a ten minute commute by car. Knight since 2005, has been currently incarcerated in Port Phillip Prison at the newly named outer Melbourne suburb of Truganina, formerly the outskirts of Laverton North, just 4km to the northwest as the crow flies.