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<\/p>\nThe owner of the Porepunkah property where Dezi Freeman shot two police officers says he filmed the entire incident, but that his phone with the footage was confiscated by police.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Andrew Swift is the property owner who says he was an eyewitness to the unfolding operation to arrest Freeman.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He has made new claims about the shooting last year in a video outlining the minutiae of the stand-off and the subsequent killings.<\/p>\n
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Andrew Swift near the converted bus occupied by Freeman and his family in Porepunkah. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
In it, Mr Swift says he knew Dezi Freeman in the 1990s and had stayed in touch.<\/p>\n
He allowed Freeman and his family to move onto his grounds in a converted bus more than three years ago, where they lived in return for doing work around the property.<\/p>\n
The account is contained in an hour-long video shot in October 2025, two months after the incident, and was released by a group whom Swift had met at a festival in the days leading up to the shooting.<\/p>\n
The group says it made the video, with Andrew Swift\u2019s cooperation, because of a distrust in the mainstream media’s account of the fatal shootings.<\/p>\n
Victoria Police said it would be inappropriate to comment on the video as the matter remained before a coroner.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Swift’s eyewitness account\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Swift says that he was in his office when Freeman’s wife, Mali, rang him and said that police were on the property.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said he had his phone on and was recording as he approached the scene, which included around 10 policemen.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“One of the police officers, I can’t recall if he grabbed me, but he threatened to say that if I was to interfere in this police search or whatever it was that I’d be arrested,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I just said to him that I’d remain as a witness and I still continued filming.”<\/p>\n
Mr Swift said he could hear Freeman, Mali and their toddler son “totally stressed’ by the operation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“But Dezi was really quite together, although heightened in anxiety about asking the right questions,” Mr Swift said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“At one point they held the warrant up to the window and they explained what the warrant was and Dezi was basically saying that it was not valid or a load of nonsense.”<\/p>\n
Mr Swift said he eventually made his way to the back of the bus, but continued filming and tried to pick up dialogue coming from the bus.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Swift said that he could not hear Freeman mention to police that he had a gun.<\/p>\n
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A bullet hole near the bus occupied by Dezi Freeman at Andrew Swift’s Porepunkah property. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
\u201cBut just from the reaction of the police and then starting to hear on their radios, they couldn’t account for the police officers. I realised that perhaps it was Dezi that had fired those shots,” he said.<\/p>\n
At one point, Mr Swift said he caught a glimpse of Freeman ducking and yelled: “Dezi, don’t be a dick! Just be calm.”<\/p>\n
Swift rang Freeman after shooting<\/p>\n
In the video, Mr Swift claimed that he phoned Freeman shortly after shots rang out and that Freeman answered the call.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I said, Dezi are you in the bus? Where are you?”<\/p>\n
“And on one hand he says, I’m in the bus, and then on the other he says he’s down in the hazelnuts or down at the huts or the paddock below. But he definitely wasn’t with Mali.<\/p>\n
“I can’t remember if I hung up or he hung up.”<\/p>\n
Mr Swift said he gave police Freeman’s number to understand where he was.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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