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Subscriber only The 28-year-old Southside man accused of a nine-hour shotgun spree through the region last Saturday night has been remanded in custody after pleading guilty to the offences in Gympie Magistrates Court on Wednesday. Damien Michael Patrick Gallaher has pleaded guilty to 10 offences police say occurred following an argument with a colleague at a local pub. Mr Gallaher’s Commodore on the left was severely damaged with a smashed windscreen and ripped up back tyres. Also pictured is the truck he crashed and the shotgun used. Mr Gallaher is charged with driving through Gympie region streets in his Holden Commodore firing a shotgun at several locations, including his workplace, doing a burnout that caused his rear tyres to rip from the rims and breaking into his workplace where he took a truck and crashed it into a tree.
Here are eight Gympie drivers who avoided the law and made the cop s job harder.
1. Shotgun killer jailed after driving rampage ends in Gympie A convicted killer was given another three years in jail for a terrifying rampage that ended in Gympie. John Allan Black, 45, repeatedly evaded police and drove on the wrong side of the road during an attempted meth-addled getaway that ended when he crashed on a dead-end road in Gympie. John Allan Black served 12 years for the shooting manslaughter of a Mt Isa man. Black pleaded guilty to two counts each of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, along with nine summary offences he racked up throughout the rampage.
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A Southside street has become the second worst street for assaults in Gympie following Mary St, according to a Queensland Police data website.
It was a busy year overall for Gympie police as they dealt with a total of 168 assaults, which was the highest recorded total since 2002 when there were 174 assaults.
Looking more closely at the data, the months of March, June and December had the most recordings, with December being the worst, at 22 assaults.
Acting Gympie Police Station officer in charge Scott Poole said the spike in December was due to more people travelling and drinking in the region during the holiday season.
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Gympie police have described a terrifying nine hour spree in which a 28-year-old man allegedly pointed a shotgun at someone and let off more than a dozen rounds across the region as “targeted” and a “one off”.
The Southside man, who will face 10 charges in the Gympie court today, including dangerous conduct with a weapon, allegedly went on his spree after an argument with another person at a Gympie hotel about 5.30pm on Saturday.
Detective Inspector Rob Lowry said at a press conference earlier today (Monday) that following the argument the man visited several locations across the region, including two homes, a work site and a national park.
He left some of his belongings behind, including the brown safe, but when the women tried to contact him, she got no response. The woman, who became a witness, kept the safe stored in the garage until 2019 when she decided to move interstate, and needed to sell the safe, which she advertised on the Albury-Wodonga Buy, Sell, Swap Facebook page. Michael John Portwood On November 30, 2019, a man bought the safe and came over with a friend to pick it up and take it home. Once at home the man used an angle grinder to open the safe, revealing a number of hard drives, a yellow envelope containing photo ID and bank cards with Portwood s name on them as well as six USBs.