{"id":577800,"date":"2026-04-01T04:45:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T04:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/577800\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T04:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T04:45:08","slug":"victoria-police-formally-identify-dezi-freeman-as-man-shot-dead-in-thologolong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/577800\/","title":{"rendered":"Victoria Police formally identify Dezi Freeman as man shot dead in Thologolong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Victoria Police have officially confirmed that the person shot dead by officers at a property in Victoria’s north-east<\/a> on Monday morning was Dezi Freeman, having previously declined to do so.<\/p>\n

Police on Wednesday said they had formally identified the deceased as Freeman, who had been on the run for seven months after killing two police officers and injuring a third last August.<\/p>\n

A police statement said the investigation into the shooting, on a property in Thologolong, was being undertaken by the Homicide Squad.<\/p>\n

The ABC understands up to eight officers from Victoria Police’s Special Operations Group fired their weapons towards Freeman on Monday.<\/p>\n

Police also used non-lethal baton rounds and tear gas during the three-hour standoff.<\/p>\n

Loading…<\/p>\n

In the statement on Wednesday, police said they could not provide any detail on Freeman’s movements between the fatal shooting in Porepunkah last year, and the incident in Thologolong, with that investigation also ongoing.<\/p>\n

“Any impact of the Walwa fires and their proximity to the location where Freeman was located will also form part of those enquiries,” the statement said.<\/p>\n

The remote region was also swarming with emergency services in January, when bushfires tore through the area, scorching more than 120,000 hectares and destroying 14 homes.<\/p>\n

A local firefighter<\/a> said the ignition point of the mammoth blaze, caused by a lightning strike, was less than a kilometre from Freeman’s hideout.<\/p>\n

Victoria Police said families of the officers killed in August \u2014 Senior Constable Vadim de Waart-Hottart and Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson \u2014 had decided not to comment at this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victoria Police have officially confirmed that the person shot dead by officers at a property in Victoria’s north-east…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,72303,216100,5315,44,6646,4686,2024],"class_list":["post-577800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dezi-freeman","tag-identified","tag-investigation","tag-news","tag-police-shooting","tag-property","tag-victoria-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577800","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=577800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577800\/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=577800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}