• Nath@aussie.zoneOPM
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    19 days ago

    Police said they believe a 43-year-man driving a white Toyota Landcruiser struck Ms Haines outside her office on Murphy Street about 3.35pm.

    “When he exited the Toyota the driver, a 43-year-old Tarrawingee man, was arrested at the scene by a passerby,” Victoria Police said.

    “The woman was taken to hospital with critical injuries.”

    Police said a knife was located by officers and seized from inside the Toyota.

    Are you fucking serious? So angry at a politician that you try to kill her? She isn’t even a member of a political party - so you can’t pin it on overall anger at Labor/Libs for something or other.

    • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      19 days ago

      Wild. I get directing violence at people directly involved in murder. Like the PM/home affairs (UN condemened crimes against humanity concentration camp blacksites for refugees)/foreign affairs etc. or the powerbrokers. Those people are actually mass murderers. It’s not effective but I understand why someone might be 100 years out of date on propaganda of the deed shit.

      Who is this lady and what the hell as she done?

  • arbilp3@aussie.zone
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    19 days ago

    About an hour ago ABC reported that Ms Haines was undergoing emergency surgery in Melbourne after suffering severe injuries to her lower body…

    It is understood the 43-year-old driver, who was arrested at the scene, is known to police and will undergo a mental health assessment. Counter-terror investigators will also examine his history as they search for the motivation behind the attack.

  • maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone
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    19 days ago

    Arrested man was anti-logging campaigner, environment group tells ABC:

    Brendan Nugent, who has been arrested by police over the attack on Helen Haines, was an anti-logging campaigner who had previously been involved with the Save our Strathbogie Forest group:

    Chairperson Bertram Lobert told the ABC Nugent was an active member for about two years before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, but he hadn’t heard from him since then.

    He said Nugent would drive an hour from his Tarrawingee home to get to the group’s meetings.

    “At the time he was an intensely intelligent man interested in the issues our group was interested in,” Lobert said.

    “He was a person who cared about the environment. He got on generally well with people.”

    He said he was in shock to learn Mr Nugent had been arrested over the attack on Ms Haines.

    “The whole thing is so sad … we have members of our group who are friends with Helen,” he said.

    “So it’s real, it’s immediate. It’s going to hurt.”

    • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      18 days ago

      Intensely intelligent but apparently not versed in why 20th century political assasinations failed? Or psychotic break? Or brain cooked by C-19 infections and slopagander?

      • dillekant@slrpnk.net
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        18 days ago

        It’s unclear what happened, so speculating is useless. He has spoken in support of her in the past, has basically the same political positions as her as far as anyone can tell, so to go from that to this is not something which can be reasoned about. I think there’s a desire to shoehorn this as a political thing but honestly I feel this is a mistake.

      • bignose@aussie.zone
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        18 days ago

        Instead of ignorant (as in, we don’t have the relevant information) speculation, please leave time and space for those charged with investigating the matter, to do their job and report what they find.

        Wild speculation only fuels exactly the kind of madness that leads to this violence. Please stop.

        • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          18 days ago

          Nobody is going to be killed because I’m joking about someone’s brain being cooked. Lemmy is irrelevant lol

  • Wataba@sh.itjust.works
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    18 days ago

    According to the live broadcast I’ve just seen (3:00pm), she’s already lost one leg, they’ve yet to determine if the other will have to be amputated too.

  • maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone
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    19 days ago

    Burke provides more details on what unfolded outside Haines’s office

    Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has provided some more detail on what happened outside Helen Haines’s office yesterday afternoon.

    Burke says witnesses in Wangaratta saw the driver of the Toyota LandCruiser do a U-turn and ram Haines against her vehicle.

    He says the driver reversed and hit the Indi MP a second time, before a bystander ran towards the car and remove the driver from the car.

  • A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.com
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    18 days ago

    Sounds like it’s quite undercharged: dangerous driving and causing serious injury (charges usually laid for a reckless accident not an intentional act), and causing harm to a Commonwealth public official (which could be laid for relatively minor injuries).

    Either they know something we don’t, or they’re going soft on him for some reason. Why not attempted murder for example, if the intent was there? Perhaps he convinced them somehow he genuinely didn’t want to kill and only intended for her injuries to be minor, perhaps her political leanings were not to the police’s satisfaction to go hard on the charges (or maybe there is more coming). Maybe it’s a deal to plead guilty to those charges rather than fight more serious ones on the grounds of insanity.

    • shirro@aussie.zone
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      18 days ago

      It takes time to gather evidence and lay charges. This sort of speculation is stupid. Let the police and courts do their jobs without uninformed backseating.