Pro Verbs 28:1
"The wicked flee when none pursueth."
"I am not my brother's keeper" - Clinton Hoffmann, elder brother of alleged gunman Ben Hoffmann
"I just hope people think Darwin is still a safe place to visit." - killing spree eyewitness Leah Potter
"CU in the NT" - unofficial advertising slogan of Australia's Northern Territory, recently banned
"The remedy for...dehumanization isn't deification." - Rachel Kadish, from "On the Search for Victims Who Are Too Perfect to Be Us"
Seven days and 15 hours ago, 45-year-old Benjamin Hoffmann went on an hour-long shooting rampage following an earlier traffic stop for speeding, killing a taxi driver, a security guard, a roofer, and a retired mechanic with a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun in the city of Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.
A January 2019 parolee with an ankle bracelet, Hoffmann apologized at his first court appearance, and also asked the judge for help. At the time the shooting began, he had been asking for a man (later identified as Alexandros Deligiannis) at the budget Palms Motel, running room to room screaming out the name "Alex", using buckshot as interrogative.
His first victim, Lebanese taxi driver and PhD student Hassan Baydoun, was the victim of random gunfire, parked under the Palms on a meal break from his Ramadan fast. A 22-year-old (or 23-year-old) woman, shot through the door at the Palms (or at the Gardens Hill Crescent neighborhood around the corner, where the shooter next fled, details still maddeningly unclear) and also likely unknown to the shooter, survived. Former auto mechanic Nigel Hellings, 75 (or 76), was shot and bled out in his Gardens Hill Crescent townhouse minutes later. Hellings also had no known connection to the alleged shooter.
The third victim, Greek roofer Michael Sisois, a former work colleague of Hoffman's, was tracked down and killed at the Buff Club bar and restaurant parking lot about four blocks away. The killing spree ended when New Zealander Robert Courtney, a 52-year-old casino security guard also known to Hoffmann, fought with and stabbed Hoffman before being shot with four rounds inside an apartment he shared with Johnny Reid, who somehow escaped Hoffmann's rage. Courtney, according to one report denied by relatives, had been scheduled to appear in a Darwin court later that week for sex-related offenses.
Drugs and jealousy over a woman known to both Hoffmann and Deligiannis, a girlfriend Hoffmann believed was sleeping with Deligiannis, provoked the attack, according to police.
Darwin, home to motorcycle gangs and a flourishing heroin and meth trade, has higher murder rates than much of the United States. At the same time, it is a popular tourist spot and a place where all of its 130,000 residents, birthed by 60 different nations, seem to know and like each other, leaving their doors unlocked at night. But, days later, the question directed over and over to a tortured Thomas Levy in "Marathon Man" rings true here, be it outside Tandoori Vibes or elbow deep in Kurt's Cakes: "Is it safe?"
Prior to his parole, Hoffmann had served four years of a six-year sentence for repeatedly striking Hussain Garling's over the head with a baseball bat in front of his infant son. Despite Australia's strict gun laws, the Northern Territory is home to over 60,000 firearms, many produced and sold, as Hoffmann's shotgun was, over 20 years ago. After an hour of intemperate, ice-fueled chaos, Hoffmann attempted to kick in the door of the Northern Territory police headquarters in Berrimah, an eastern suburb of Darwin, to turn himself in. Apparently no one answered.
"You must pay for everything in this world, one way and another. There is nothin' free, except the grace of God" - Mattie Ross, reminiscing some years after avenging the death of her father
"I am not my brother's keeper" - Clinton Hoffmann, elder brother of alleged gunman Ben Hoffmann
"I just hope people think Darwin is still a safe place to visit." - killing spree eyewitness Leah Potter
"CU in the NT" - unofficial advertising slogan of Australia's Northern Territory, recently banned
"The remedy for...dehumanization isn't deification." - Rachel Kadish, from "On the Search for Victims Who Are Too Perfect to Be Us"
Seven days and 15 hours ago, 45-year-old Benjamin Hoffmann went on an hour-long shooting rampage following an earlier traffic stop for speeding, killing a taxi driver, a security guard, a roofer, and a retired mechanic with a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun in the city of Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.
A January 2019 parolee with an ankle bracelet, Hoffmann apologized at his first court appearance, and also asked the judge for help. At the time the shooting began, he had been asking for a man (later identified as Alexandros Deligiannis) at the budget Palms Motel, running room to room screaming out the name "Alex", using buckshot as interrogative.
His first victim, Lebanese taxi driver and PhD student Hassan Baydoun, was the victim of random gunfire, parked under the Palms on a meal break from his Ramadan fast. A 22-year-old (or 23-year-old) woman, shot through the door at the Palms (or at the Gardens Hill Crescent neighborhood around the corner, where the shooter next fled, details still maddeningly unclear) and also likely unknown to the shooter, survived. Former auto mechanic Nigel Hellings, 75 (or 76), was shot and bled out in his Gardens Hill Crescent townhouse minutes later. Hellings also had no known connection to the alleged shooter.
The third victim, Greek roofer Michael Sisois, a former work colleague of Hoffman's, was tracked down and killed at the Buff Club bar and restaurant parking lot about four blocks away. The killing spree ended when New Zealander Robert Courtney, a 52-year-old casino security guard also known to Hoffmann, fought with and stabbed Hoffman before being shot with four rounds inside an apartment he shared with Johnny Reid, who somehow escaped Hoffmann's rage. Courtney, according to one report denied by relatives, had been scheduled to appear in a Darwin court later that week for sex-related offenses.
Drugs and jealousy over a woman known to both Hoffmann and Deligiannis, a girlfriend Hoffmann believed was sleeping with Deligiannis, provoked the attack, according to police.
Darwin, home to motorcycle gangs and a flourishing heroin and meth trade, has higher murder rates than much of the United States. At the same time, it is a popular tourist spot and a place where all of its 130,000 residents, birthed by 60 different nations, seem to know and like each other, leaving their doors unlocked at night. But, days later, the question directed over and over to a tortured Thomas Levy in "Marathon Man" rings true here, be it outside Tandoori Vibes or elbow deep in Kurt's Cakes: "Is it safe?"
Prior to his parole, Hoffmann had served four years of a six-year sentence for repeatedly striking Hussain Garling's over the head with a baseball bat in front of his infant son. Despite Australia's strict gun laws, the Northern Territory is home to over 60,000 firearms, many produced and sold, as Hoffmann's shotgun was, over 20 years ago. After an hour of intemperate, ice-fueled chaos, Hoffmann attempted to kick in the door of the Northern Territory police headquarters in Berrimah, an eastern suburb of Darwin, to turn himself in. Apparently no one answered.
"You must pay for everything in this world, one way and another. There is nothin' free, except the grace of God" - Mattie Ross, reminiscing some years after avenging the death of her father
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