{"id":182055,"date":"2025-10-01T08:02:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T08:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/182055\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T08:02:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T08:02:07","slug":"specialist-search-teams-deployed-near-benalla-in-search-for-dezi-freeman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/182055\/","title":{"rendered":"Specialist search teams deployed near Benalla in search for Dezi Freeman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Police are continuing the search for alleged gunman Dezi Freeman, deploying search teams to the area around Benalla in Victoria&#8217;s north-east.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Benalla is about 85km to the west of Porepunkah, where Mr Freeman is alleged to have shot and killed two police officers at a rural property on August 26.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Victoria Police said more than 200 police officers were currently dedicated to the search for Dezi Freeman, down from about 500 in the aftermath of the shooting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">The force said today&#8217;s search around Benalla forms part of a &#8220;planned operation&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">&#8220;There is no immediate risk to community safety and further information will be provided once operationally appropriate to do so,&#8221; a police spokesperson said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">&#8220;This forms part of the ongoing investigation in the Porepunkah area in the search for Desmond Freeman, we will not be providing further comment on operational activities.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">A month after the shooting, authorities <a class=\"Link_link__5eL5m ScreenReaderOnly_srLinkHint__OysWz Link_showVisited__C1Fea Link_showFocus__ALyv2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2025-09-26\/porepunkah-gunman-dezi-freeman-shooting-latest\/105806284\" data-component=\"Link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">have had no confirmed sightings of Mr Freeman, despite hundreds of public tip-offs and a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">The reward represents the biggest reward of its kind in Victorian history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police are continuing the search for alleged gunman Dezi Freeman, deploying search teams to the area around Benalla&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,72303,72541,12491,44,1158,71351,4905,58400],"class_list":["post-182055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dezi-freeman","tag-fugitive","tag-gunman","tag-news","tag-police","tag-porepunkah","tag-shooting","tag-sovereign-citizen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}