An innocent bystander has been shot in the leg by police while standing near the front door of her home in suburban Cairns.<\/p>\n
Police said the 50-year-old was accidentally hit when officers fired at a man allegedly armed with knives at a neighbouring property in Mount Sheridan on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Far Northern region assistant commissioner Graeme Paine said the shootings happened during an “extremely dangerous” incident with “very significant threat levels”.<\/p>\n
“It was a busy residential and traffic area. It appears that one of the bullets that was discharged from the firearm has struck this lady in the lower leg,” Paine said.<\/p>\n
“It’s the actions of the person at the time, and the level of threat, which then dictates the response by the officers.”<\/p>\n
The situation was very challenging and distressing for the family and officers involved, Paine said.<\/p>\n
Officers shot the 28-year-old man in the leg and arm after repeated attempts to get him to surrender, police said.<\/p>\n
The man and woman are in a stable condition in Cairns Hospital.<\/p>\n
“It’s an extremely dangerous situation, we are well aware of what can happen with knives in a public place,” Paine said.<\/p>\n
‘Incredibly dynamic situation’<\/p>\n
At 5:11pm on Saturday, police received multiple emergency-call reports of a man armed with knives on Benjamina Street following alleged attempts to break into two homes.<\/p>\n
Police said the man was confronted by occupants during the break-ins and allegedly stole two large knives.<\/p>\n
They said the man was found after a search, which involved the police helicopter, at the intersection of Foster and Hardy roads where he was given “numerous” verbal commands to surrender.<\/p>\n
The Queensland Police Service Ethical Standards Command is reviewing the police response to the incident.<\/p>\n
Investigators are speaking with the three officers – one sergeant and two constables – who deployed their firearms.<\/p>\n
“Things can escalate very quickly \u2026 it is very hard to anticipate a person’s responses to verbal directions or different commands,” Paine said.<\/p>\n
“We’re focused now on doing the investigation, getting a really complete picture of what happened and supporting both the officers and police.”<\/p>\n
Multiple crime scenes have been established as forensic investigations continue.<\/p>\n
Police are appealing to anyone with information and any relevant video footage to come forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An innocent bystander has been shot in the leg by police while standing near the front door of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-544340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}