Queen Street massacre

The Queen Street massacre was a mass shooting that occurred on 8 December 1987 at Australia Post offices on 191 Queen Street in Melbourne, Victoria, when 22-year-old Frank Vitkovic, a former tennis player and law school withdrawee, entered the building on the pretext of visiting a friend, and opened fire on office workers at random with an illegally modified M1 carbine, killing eight and injuring five. After being disarmed, he crawled from an 11th-floor window and died on impact.

Event

Background

Vitkovic was born on 7 September 1965 to a Croatian father and an Italian mother, Drago and Antoienetta. Drago worked as a self-employed painter, while Antoienetta worked mainly as a domestic worker in hospitals. Along with an older sister, Frank grew up in the Melbourne suburb of West Preston. He attended Redden Catholic College (formerly Immaculate Heart College, Preston, later renamed Samaritan Catholic College) in Preston. At school he was known as an intelligent child, one who memorised statistics and sports scores so much he became known as "The Stats Man", but was still quiet and shy. He played cricket during school but later pursued tennis, winning a number of local club competitions.

After graduating, he started a law degree course at Melbourne University in 1984. While running in October 1984 he suffered a minor knee injury that required multiple surgeries but later fully healed. Following a complicated diagnosis and recovery process however the injury became a major fixation in Vitkovic's mind, and he began to believe he was permanently disabled. It caused him to spiral into depression, subsequently giving up playing tennis and taking a leave of absence from university in August 1985.

Shooting

On 8 December 1987 at around 4:20 p.m., Vitkovic entered the building at 191 Queen Street, Melbourne, carrying a sawn-off M1 carbine in a brown paper bag. A male office worker, Donald McElroy (who had been shot once), and Tony Gioia tackled Vitkovic, while Frank Carmody, who had been shot several times, ripped the rifle out of his possession. Gioia and Carmody were later awarded Australia's second-highest bravery decoration, the Star of Courage. A wounded female worker, Rosemary Spiteri, took the rifle and hid it in a refrigerator.

Vitkovic had fallen at 4:27 p.m.; police started their search of the building at 4:30 p.m. At 5:00 p.m., the Special Operations Group confirmed that the dead man on the street was indeed Vitkovic, and the all clear was given for ambulance crew to enter the building to attend to the injured.

Aftermath

A search of Vitkovic's room after the killings revealed that Vitkovic kept press clippings of the Clifton Hill massacre, with extracts underlined in red.

In the note, addressed to his parents and dated the day of the massacre, he wrote "Today is going to be the day. The anger in my head has got too much for me. I've got to get rid of my violent impulses. The time has come to die. There is no other way out." The note had not been read by his parents before it was discovered by police.

Vitkovic had obtained his shooting permit on 17 September 1987. When asked at that time why he wanted such a permit, Vitkovic stated "I desire to go hunting". He purchased the rifle on lay-by, collecting it 21 October 1987. Before the shooting, Vitkovic had removed the barrel and the handle of the weapon.

After the shooting, a neighbourhood friend of the family said that Vitkovic was an excellent student, a good tennis player, friendly and helpful, over six feet tall and very good looking. According to Inspector Adrian Fyfe, the officer in charge at the scene, the first police officer on the scene, a traffic policeman, had acted appropriately. He had used his initiative to isolate the area and had made an accurate assessment of the situation. Fyfe criticised this officer's "appalling" lack of knowledge of "police command structure" for not realising who was in charge until 5:00 p.m., 40 minutes after his arrival. Fyfe said the radio call sign he used identified him as the officer in charge.

Con Margelis testified to the coronial enquiry that he and Vitkovic had been friends for several years. Margelis said after Vitkovic arrived to see him on 8 December, he pulled out his rifle, tried to pull the trigger and then aimed it at a female colleague and told her not to move. Knowing that Vitkovic could not move quickly due to a bad knee, Margelis jumped over the counter and hid in the women's toilets on the 5th floor. Margelis said he expected that Vitkovic would come after him, leaving others in the office safe. Of possible reasons for Vitkovic's actions, Margelis said he had not seen Vitkovic in the months prior, adding that "I can't really explain". Margelis said Vitkovic had become depressed and embittered after injuring his leg playing tennis, followed by a failed operation to repair the damage. Margelis said he began to see little of Vitkovic due to his depression.

Another employee in the 5th floor office said that their colleague Judith Morris was shot as Margelis attempted to leap over the counter: "He was after Con and Judy was in the way." This witness described Vitkovic's eyes as being those of someone "completely insane" and his laugh as "sick" and not human, adding that he laughed after shooting Morris.

The counsel assisting the coroner, Julian Leckie, judged that this witness was "honest but mistaken". He said that photographs showed Gioia was not wearing a blue sweater on the day. Evidence showed that Vitkovic tried to jump and others tried to prevent this.

At the coroner's hearing on 4 October 1988, Joe Dickson, counsel assisting the court, said that the police response was "satisfactory, and no complaints could be made about it." He said that police response was fast, and the decision not to send ambulance officers into the building until it was cleared was responsible, noting that no one died because of any delay. He said the police officer who sent people back into the building truly believed he advised them to go to the top floor, despite evidence that he did not. The hearing heard that while three of the people sent back into the building had emotional trauma, no person sent back died or was injured. Dickson conceded that the senior constable who sent people back into the building might not have taken the best course of action.

Dickson said a routine practice on the 12th floor where staff had to open a security door to talk to visitors rendered its security measures ineffective. He said the 5th floor Telecom Credit Union security measures were "adequate for all purposes except the visit of a maniac." On the 11th floor, no one could have perceived the possibility of a robbery or violence. Dickson said Vitkovic's visit to the Melbourne University counsellor in December 1986 could not be seen to have contributed to the killings. He said that Vitkovic probably brooded over the results of a Church of Scientology personality test given to him on 8 October 1987. "Nancy" Avignone, 18

Warren David Spencer, 29
Michael Francis McGuire, 38
Marianne Jacoba Van Ewyk, 38
Catherine Mary Dowling, 28
Rodney Gerard Brown, 32

All victims died of gunshot wounds.

Brown was still alive when police arrived on the scene but later died. The doctor who performed several of the autopsies told the inquest that even had Brown been taken to a neurological unit within 15 minutes of being shot, his chances for survival would have been "very slight".

Many survivors suffered posttraumatic stress.

Queen Street massacre

Event

Background

Shooting

Aftermath

See also

References

Further reading