Former detective Kel Glare was driving home when the call came through that there had been a mass shooting in Melbourne’s inner northern suburbs in 1987.
37 years on, families, witnesses and first responders are still haunted by the horrific attack, that would later be known as the Hoddle Street Massacre.
Glare arrived at the scene in Clifton Hill on the evening of Sunday, August 9th, where seven people were killed and 19 more were seriously injured.
Former detective Kel Glare shares an eye-witness account of the Hoddle Street Massacre on the Crime Insiders podcast:
“One of the first things I saw was a car at the curb with the passenger door hanging open. There was a young woman sitting there with a horrendous head wound and obviously dead,” Glare said.
“The street light was glinting off the diamond of her engagement ring. Yeah, a bit emotional about that. Something that I never got never got out of my head,” he said.
Former Victoria Police Chief Commissioner, Kel Glare, recalls tracking and arresting the offender, Julian Knight.
“I jumped out of the car when he stopped shooting, and [Knight] leapt up from behind the brick fence, yelling out, put his hands in the air. Yelling out, don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” he said.
Knight was a 19-year-old army cadet at the time and had been discharged from the Royal Military College at Duntroon 16 days earlier.
“Later on, he claimed he wanted to experience combat. I’d never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. He wanted to shoot people.”
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