2 days ago
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Sophie Quinn was sitting in a car with her partner, John Harris, outside a house in Lake Cargelligo on Thursday afternoon when a ute approached from the opposite direction.
From the driver’s side window, at least three shots were fired, killing her and Harris. Quinn was seven months pregnant with a boy her family say she planned to name Troy.
Not long after the shooting, as her family and police gathered at the scene, shouts rang out.
“They were saying ‘Hoolio is at Nerida’s, he’s at Nerida’s, he’s going to shoot again, you should have arrested him months ago, he’s doing it again’,” a neighbour, Zac Phillips, told Guardian Australia on Saturday.
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Police raced about a kilometre away to find Nerida Quinn, Sophie’s aunt, and a neighbour, Kaleb Macqueen, injured. Nerida died, but Macqueen is expected to recover.
“Hoolio” is Julian Ingram, Quinn’s former partner, who is on bail for alleged domestic violence offences against her. The morning of the shooting, he reported to the local police station as part of his bail conditions.
But now he is on the run. From Nerida’s house, it is believed he was last seen heading north, towards Euabalong.
On Sunday morning, police were responding to a reported sighting of Ingram at Mount Hope, about 70km north of Lake Cargelligo, the first reported sighting since the killings.
The shooting spree in Lake Cargelligo, a town in remote central west NSW known as the oasis in the outback, was over in minutes; police suspect Ingram did not even get out of the Lachlan Shire council ute he was driving.
Ingram allegedly killed Sophie and her partner, turned left out of her street and drove a few short blocks west, behind the bowls club, and the school where Nerida worked as a cleaner, before turning left into Walker Street, and continuing the carnage.
A neighbour of Nerida’s said he heard five shots before rushing next door to find the victims. Police, racing from the other crime scene, arrived soon after. Family at the Walker Street property declined to comment.
The town is awash now with rumour and innuendo, by the warped logic that actions so brutal must have been necessitated by an unforgivable slight.
Sophie’s family say Ingram was violent simply because he could be, as other domestic abusers before him have been.
“My sister, my aunty, my friend and unborn nephew were massacred,” her sister Katy said on Friday.
“My nephew was innocent.
“None of the victims’ families are safe.”
Katy and other locals believe Ingram had a list of people he wished to target, and would not stop until caught.
NSW police assistant commissioner, Andrew Holland, said Ingram never held a gun licence, and police were investigating how he obtained the weapon or weapons allegedly used in the shooting.
Asked whether other associates of Ingram’s former partner should fear for their safety, Holland said on Saturday: “I think everyone needs to be concerned for their safety at this point, he’s a man with a firearm, he’s obviously taken a violent action in a country location.
“This offender, we can’t tell what his actions are going to do in the future, what he’s going to do next … people need to use extreme caution when they’re moving about and be mindful of the fact there is a person who is on the loose, in the area, and may have a firearm.”
Holland said that Ingram complied with all bail conditions, and a threat assessment was carried out when bail was granted.
Police had not received any information since the shooting that indicated the threat posed by Ingram may have increased since that original risk assessment.
Ingram was charged in relation to an offence on 12 November. Court documents show that Sophie Quinn had an apprehended domestic violence order (ADVO) taken out against him in December that was due to be reviewed in court on 3 February.
Police granted Ingram bail on 30 November over one count of stalking and harassment with the intention to cause physical harm, one count of common assault, and one count of damage or destroying property. He pleaded not guilty. A lawyer believed to have acted for Ingram in the matter was contacted for comment.
There was no evidence, Holland said, that Ingram had been stalking or tracking Sophie immediately before the shooting, but he said on Friday that Ingram had a “long history with criminal matters”.
“He has similar incidents relating to violent offences, but he has not breached any of these orders for the past five years.”
The Quinns are a well known local Indigenous family, and Harris was also Indigenous.
As much as the hunt for Ingram feels like outback noir, with a gunman fleeing into scrub and red dirt stretching into a cloudless and edgeless sky, there is an awful truth to the offending: Aboriginal women are shockingly overrepresented in family violence related deaths, and many of these deaths are committed by men who are known to police.
The NSW Aboriginal Land Council said in a statement it was “deeply shocked and saddened” by the events.
“This is a devastating loss. The three individuals were pillars of the local community, and their loss will be felt by their families, friends and the wider network,” it said.
Nerida, a mother of four and grandmother of six, and Sophie, 25, were close, regularly spending time together around town. Sophie also shared multiple posts online regarding abusive relationships.
Guardian Australia’s attempts to contact Nerida’s sister, Sophie’s mother, were unsuccessful.
One woman who knew Nerida, 50, described her as a lovely person, the kind of woman who loved a chat, and would not hurt a soul.
Ingram was known around town for having several children with former partners, as a brawler at the local pub, and for his work with the council.
One local said he saw a former partner of Ingram leaving town with the daughter she shared with him within an hour of the shooting.
Phillips came outside his house on Thursday afternoon when he heard gunshots. He had thought the sound was buckets falling off a shelf outside his house.
Phillips knew Ingram and the victims for years. He believed Quinn and Ingram only separated in the past 12 months or so.
Phillips would regularly see both around town; Quinn with her new partner, Harris, Ingram working for council, including on the tourist information centre, which Phillips said he single-handedly upgraded to include a fountain and brickwork.
Sophie was the year below him in high school.
“She was a sweet girl, very quiet, kept to herself,” he said.
Phillips and Ingram went hunting together, he said, and he witnessed Ingram’s familiarity with guns, even if he never had a licence.
“He was a crack shot,” he said.
“And he’s a brush cutter, so he could disappear into the bush and you wouldn’t know where he’s gone, where he’s been, or where he’s going to.
“He could go out here and then head on to a back road and pop up in Sydney.”
Police searched Ingram’s house in Lake Cargelligo, only a short distance from Sophie Quinn’s, on Saturday. They searched properties in Euabalong on Friday night, and it is believed they also travelled to Murrin Bridge as part of the search.
One man who spoke to police while collecting property including a motorbike from Ingram’s house said he was doing so on behalf of his family members.
He said he didn’t know Ingram well, but had drank with him occasionally at the pub.
When asked if he had a reputation for fighting there, he replied “yeah he didn’t mind throwing hands. And the worst part was the little cunt could handle himself.”
On Saturday morning, as floral tributes were being placed on a power pole near where Quinn and Harris were killed, and as rear windscreen glass remained on the road, police started questioning neighbours, including Phillips.
Later that afternoon they also spoke with Sandra Little, Macqueen’s grandmother.
She lived across the road from Nerida Quinn, and confirmed her grandson was shot in cross-fire, rather than deliberately targeted, and was recovering well in hospital, but declined to comment further. Bullet holes could be seen through the front window of Nerida’s house.
Ingram’s bushcraft has necessitated that police expand the search area, Holland said.
He could not estimate the size of its new perimeter; it was impossible to do so, he said, when a single local property alone could be four or five hundred hectares.
A hard job will be made even harder in the next few days, with temperatures forecast to hit 44 degrees on Sunday, before a stretch of six days of at least 45 degrees.
That forecast could mean Ingram needs more than bushcraft to survive.
“Mr Ingram has worked in the area for a long time, he is known to a lot of people in the area, and he’s well-known among the community,” Holland said.
“He obviously could be accessing people … we’re making contact with known associates, trying to cut down those possibilities.
“But there is the possibility that people are assisting him to avoid police apprehension.”
