The grieving son of cop killer Dezi Freeman has lashed out at ‘disgusting’ reactions online after his father was shot dead by police following a three hour standoff.
Freeman, 56, was gunned down shortly after 8.30am on Monday after he was found inside a long caravan near Walwa, about 188km north-east of Porepunkah, where he went missing on August 26, 2025.
An elite Special Operations Group (SOG) had confronted him after they received a tip-off on his whereabouts, cordoned off the area and laid in wait overnight.
Sources revealed Freeman was wrapped in a blanket when he exited the structure, firing a hand gun that had belonged to one of the two officers he had killed last year.
They added a Filipino couple had been harbouring him on a property in Thologolong.
Freeman’s son, Koah, made an emotional Facebook post on a Bright community noticeboard just hours after his father was killed by police, bringing to an end a seven-month manhunt.
‘I am not here to defend my father’s actions because I know what he did was wrong,’ Koah said.
‘What I’m here about however is seeing so called ‘friends’ and people who I thought were nice people say some questionable things.
‘I hope you all realise that I am looking at everything you are saying, and that you all realise how that is making me feel. I know you people all have thoughts to share about the situation that has been happening.
‘Just bear in mind that to you’s my father was a cop killer, but to me that’s still my father who raised me to be the man I am today. And for the people who know me well they know exactly what I’m talking about.
‘This is news that I’ll be grieving about while some of you disgusting humans celebrate online for me to watch.
‘Before you have something smart to say, how about you try and experience 1 per cent of what me and my family are going through?
‘If you can’t then I highly recommend keeping your nasty comments and thoughts to yourself.’
Freeman was located after a tip-off ‘from someone close to him’, with heavily armed police surrounding the remote property near Walwa.
Daily Mail understands officers attempted to negotiate with the sovereign citizen before the situation escalated into a three-hour standoff, ending when he was shot dead.
Freeman had been on the run since he fatally shot Detective Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson, 59, and Senior Constable Vadim de Waart-Hottart, 34, and injured a third officer at Porepunkah, about 300km north-east of Melbourne, on August 26.
Fugitive Dezi Freeman has been shot dead after seven months on the run after reportedly being found inside a shipping container near Walwa, 188km from Porepunkah
The Porepunkah property where Dezi Freeman shot and killed two Victoria Police officers
Victoria Police Commissioner Mike Bush said Freeman was believed to be armed when officers shot him and had been located inside a structure described as ‘a cross between a container and a very long caravan’.
‘We are examining the sequence of events and we will be able to report on that, but it did result from a stand-off, the deployment of tactics,’ he said.
‘He then exited the building. There was an opportunity for him to surrender peacefully which he did not.’
Commissioner Bush said no one else was on the property at the time of the shooting.
‘It’s a very remote community,’ he said.
‘To my knowledge, no one else was in the immediate vicinity, but there may have been people in the wider vicinity.
‘There are vehicles there. Whether he used them or not will be part of the investigation.’
There were no animals on the property.
Freeman shot dead Detective Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson, 59
Freeman also shot dead Senior Constable Vadim de Waart-Hottart, 34
Commissioner Bush added there were still questions to be answered about Freeman’s timeline.
‘We don’t know at what point he left the Porepunkah area and transferred to where he was found,’ he said.
Anyone living in the wider area will be spoken to by police.
Commissioner Bush said the ‘shooting was justified’.
‘The very first people to be made aware of the outcome of this operation were the families of the officers tragically killed on August 26, and all of the members that were involved on that day,’ he said.
‘There was a lot to suggest that Freeman had taken his own life. But I can tell you standing here that our investigators, that’s why they’re professionals, keep their mind open to every possible outcome and follow every possible lead.
‘What I can say – should it be confirmed that the deceased is Freeman, is this brings closure to what was a tragic and terrible event.’
Police are now working to determine how he evaded capture for so long – and whether others helped him.
Freeman had been a sovereign citizen
‘We are very keen to learn who, if any, but I’m sure some, assisted him,’ Commissioner Bush said.
‘If anyone was complicit… they will be held to account.’
The search for Dezi Freeman
Freeman was last seen armed and fleeing into bushland near his Rayner Track property after the fatal shootings on August 26, 2025.
The shot officers were among a group of ten who had attended Freeman’s property to serve a warrant over historical sex abuse allegations.
The shootings sparked a massive manhunt, with hundreds of officers scouring bushland in and around Freeman’s remote hideout beneath Mount Buffalo.
Search crews combed steep, rocky terrain littered with caves and mineshafts but found no trace of him.
More than 100 homes and properties were searched as police investigated whether anyone was helping Freeman evade arrest.
Police also offered one of the largest rewards in Australia, promising $1million for information leading to his capture.
Early in the investigation, Freeman’s wife Mali, who police confirmed was present during the fatal shootings, and a 15-year-old boy were arrested on allegations of obstructing police, but were later released without charge.
Several days later, Mali issued a statement urging her husband to surrender.
Police in December revealed they had shifted their search efforts to locating the body of Freeman, but a five-day operation using cadaver dogs and drones yielded no results.
Who was Dezi Freeman?
Freeman subscribed to so‑called sovereign citizen ideology and was receiving Centrelink payments in the lead‑up to the fatal shooting.
Followers of the movement typically deny the legitimacy of government authority and argue that laws do not apply to them.
Freeman’s views became more extreme during the Covid pandemic, when he refused to wear masks in shops, rejected vaccinations, and became increasingly vocal in his opposition to government mandates and lockdowns.
Police deployed hundreds of officers to try and track down Dezi Freeman
‘He was anti everything to do with it,’ one local told the Sydney Morning Herald.
‘He went from being just a pretty ordinary country bloke… a normal dude you’d see at the local footy club all the time to quite a strange bloke. He fell down a bit of a rabbit hole and sort of disappeared and went off the radar.’
Freeman spent years in and out of court, mostly contesting driving offences, often arguing the laws did not apply to him because of his sovereign citizen beliefs.
In 2021, he was linked to an effort to have then‑Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews charged with treason.
Footage captured Freeman during a November 2024 court appearance in Wangaratta attempting to ‘arrest’ a magistrate and police officers during a dispute over access to a national park.
He also called called police ‘frigging Nazis’, ‘Gestapo’ and ‘terrorist thugs’ and relentlessly targeted a female officer because she pulled him over for speeding.
Freeman lived in the Porepunkah area for years with his wife Mali and their children, and the family was known locally.
Mali had worked in a supermarket and also taught music to children in the community.
Neighbour Zar Saccutelli told Daily Mail he had long feared Freeman would turn violent, claiming he once threatened to kill his teenage son if he didn’t stop riding his motorbike.
‘I said to my sister, ‘This guy is a nutcase. He is going to kill someone one day… he’ll shoot someone’,’ he revealed.
Saccutelli said that despite publicly attacking police, Freeman repeatedly called them over minor neighbourhood issues, including early-morning construction noise and small disputes.
