The eldest son of suspected cop killer Dezi Freeman has revealed his family’s grim fears for their fugitive dad who is still on the run two weeks after a deadly shootout with cops.
Koah Freeman returned to work for the first time on Monday after his father allegedly gunned down three officers at his home in Porepunkah in Victoria’s High Country on August 26.
Senior Constable Vadim de Waart-Hottart, 35, and detective Neal Thompson, 59, died and a third officer was seriously injured after they were allegedly ambushed as they tried to serve a warrant on Freeman.
Freeman, 56, immediately fled into the bush and has not been seen since, despite a massive manhunt involving almost 500 police, trackers and specialist units.
On Monday, Freeman’s son admitted his father could already be lying dead in the wilderness surrounding the tiny town where the attack took place.
But he said he was trying now to get back to some form of ‘good’ normality in the wake of the horror, and move on with his life while the search continues.
‘I’m still in the heat of it,’ Koah told the Daily Mail. ‘I’ve just accepted the worst, that’s it.
‘I’m doing regular s***, going back to work and stuff to take my mind off it.’
Koah Freeman, the eldest son of suspected cop killer Dezi Freeman has broken his silence on his family’s grim fears for their fugitive dad
Koah (right) has returned to work
Dezi Freeman, 56, went on the run after he allegedly shot and killed two Victoria Police officers at his Porepunkah property on August 26
Senior Constable Thompson was farewelled at service which commenced at the Victoria Police Academy in Melbourne on Monday.
Among the attendees at the Victoria Police Academy Chapel were Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, and Victoria Police Commissioner Mike Bush.
Detective Thompson’s coffin lay in front of the packed chapel, draped in an Australian flag and topped with a Victoria Police cap.
Lisa Thompson, Neal Thompson’s partner, broke down while telling the chapel how she met him while on the job in 2016.
‘We worked one shift together and it changed the course of my life,’ she said.
‘I had never laughed so much with someone I’d just met.
‘I knew Neal to be an intensely private person, a provider and protector.
‘We were the opposite in every way, but together we were unstoppable.’
Senior Constable Neal Thompson was farewelled at service which commenced at the Victoria Police Academy in Melbourne
Sergeant Lisa Thompson, Neal Thompson’s partner, broke down while telling the chapel how she met him while on the job in 2016
Senior Constable Vadim de Waart-Hottart, 35, was farewelled on Friday
Senior Constable de Waart-Hottart was farewelled in an emotion-charged service held at the academy the Friday just gone.
It’s understood the slain officers were among 10 Victoria Police members who attended Freeman’s makeshift home built with an old bus before a shootout ensued.
On Sunday, the Daily Mail revealed the priest at the church where Dezi Freeman was a parishioner said the fugitive seemed ‘agitated’ in the days before the shootout.
Father Tony Shallue told the Daily Mail Freeman and his wife Mali and their two younger children attended Our Lady of the Snows ‘every Sunday’.
The family was so closely linked to the church that special toys were placed to occupy the Freemans’ toddler while mass was on, and Mali often volunteered to help others.
‘His love of his family was strong, he was part of the community, but that particular Sunday [two days before the alleged shootings] I just sensed it, and I didn’t know a reason, but I sensed that he just seemed a little agitated,’ he said.
‘He was jagged in his movements and walking quite quickly, whereas he’d usually just stay around and chat to people, but not that Sunday.’
Father Shallue said he first noticed something was off with Freeman when he called Pope Leo XIV the ‘Antichrist’ after Pope Francis died on April 21 this year.
Heavily-armed police continue to scour bushland looking for Freeman
Father Tony Shallue told the Daily Mail Freeman and his wife Mali and their two younger children attended Our Lady of the Snows ‘every Sunday
‘The only hint I’ve got of his sense of conspiracy or apocalyptic thinking was, when the last Pope died, it was Pope Francis, he said to me, “We’re into dangerous times” and I said, “Why?”
‘[Freeman said] “This is like the next, the next pope, you know, it could be the Antichrist,” and I said, “Get over it, Dezi. It’s dangerous thinking”.’
Father Shallue spoke after delivering his first Sunday mass at Bright since the shootings.
The church paid tribute to the fallen officers while Father Shallue delivered a sermon about how ‘no one was above the law’.
‘You just can’t appoint yourself, judge, a juror, an executioner, all in one, that exists within a society, and God, we don’t believe in capital punishment,’ he said after the sermon.
‘But he tried to arrest a magistrate, he became the magistrate, the judge, and, through his views that were fed by different factional groups and conspiracy theorists, he formed his judgments and became the jury and eventually he became the executioner.’
The massive manhunt for Freeman is about to enter its third week as 450 heavily armed and specialist police aided by the ADF search deep bushland near Porepunkah.
Police have also searched more than 100 properties in the surrounding towns and have received hundreds of tips and pieces of new information since annoucning a $1million reward.
