On Good Friday, April 6, 2012, an eight-hour standoff unfolded in Thornleigh, Sydney, when a 45-year-old man barricaded himself inside his home armed with a crossbow.
The incident began around 10:00 AM when police attempted to serve the man with a court order, and he threatened to use his crossbow.
Former detective Ben Besant was deployed to the scene along with the Tactical Operations Unit.
Ben Besant tells the full story on Crime Insiders:
Negotiations continued for several hours. The man had fortified his house so police couldn’t enter, until officers managed to break in.
“I still only had my taser out at this point. It was pitch black dark at this stage. And because of all the stunning deployments, there was a lot of smoke. So vision was very minimal,” Besant said.
Besant recalled the moment he was struck in the shoulder by an arrow while clearing a smoke-filled room, on the Crime Insiders podcast.
“As I’m panning the room, trying to get the layout, next thing I just felt something whack me really hard in my right shoulder. It actually spun me around on impact… And in the gyprock wall there’s an arrow sticking out,” he said.
Besant started yelling his team that the man was armed with a bow, and that he had been shot.
“Immediately put the taser away and pulled out my side arm, my glock. I knew within that second that the job got very real.”
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