A man fatally shot by police in the car park at Westfield Mount Druitt was a local father of two daughters. NSW Police allege the man was carrying a machete and had gone to the car park after his wife was involved in a "melee".
00:00Police have really defended their actions as to what happened yesterday and I guess given a more detailed explanation as to what led up to this shooting of this man by police yesterday here at the rooftop car park of Westfield at Mount Druitt which is behind me, it's just on the top floor here of the shopping centre just behind me here at Mount Druitt.
00:28Now what they said happened was that there was a, they were called to a brawl, they say a fight broke out between two groups of women aged in their 20s, they say it was a melee, they described it as an opportunistic meeting by these two groups of women, a fluke meeting, Police Assistant Commissioner Gavin Wood said these women didn't know each other before.
00:53We're not quite sure what triggered the fight but they ended up fighting some of the witnesses that we spoke to yesterday, talked about them screaming, pulling hair, trying to rip out each other's eyelashes.
01:07So that was the scene that we saw yesterday. Now police said when they turned up the fight had kind of dispersed. There was a man there who had an interaction with police and police say he was in fact the husband or the partner of one of the women involved in the fight.
01:27Now he disappeared according to police, he went back to his car at the car park which is up on that level and he returned with a very large machete as police described it.
01:40They said it was a 20 centimetre machete and he was following the women, some of the women that had dispersed from the group. He started to follow the women.
01:55Now police told him to drop the weapon which he did not do. They got in the way of him and the women obviously to protect them. When he did not drop the weapon as they requested him to do then they fired multiple, one of the officers fired multiple shots.
02:17Now the man collapsed to the ground, they rendered first aid and then paramedics took over and as I understand it they worked on him for about 45 minutes at the scene there up in the car park behind me on the rooftop of this shopping centre.
02:35He was declared dead at the scene. Now police say that the actions of officers were brave, that they tried to defend the women.
02:46They tried to get in the way of this man wielding the machete and the women and they say that their officers acted bravely. We might have a listen to Police Assistant Commissioner Gavin Wood.
02:59I looked at the Westfield security, I looked at the body worn video of the police. As we speak I am content with the actions of the police and I might say this if I could.
03:10The police officers got in the middle between the deceased person who was carrying a large machete and some of those females subject to the melee.
03:20Their actions were brave and I want to put that on record, their actions was brave. The investigation will be subject to scrutiny as it should be but their actions were brave.
03:29I spoke to both police last night. They were upset and the enormity of what happened had started to set in. We will put our arms around those police as we do and they deserve that.
03:41But they are good people, they are good people, they are good police officers. They didn't come to work yesterday knowing they had to shoot somebody.
03:48Now he refers to there being scrutiny over police actions. What he means there is that police will conduct an internal investigation into what happened here.
04:00Then the professional command standards command will review the internal police investigation.
04:07But the police watchdog, the LECC, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, will have the ultimate say as to whether police acted appropriately in this situation and whether their actions were reasonable and warranted.
04:24So that investigation will be carried out. So police will definitely be under the spotlight here.
04:31One of the women who were involved in the melee was taken into custody last night and questioned but has since been released pending further investigation.
04:43What we know about the man who police shot dead is that he was a 29 year old man, a partner of one of the women who were involved in the fight.
04:52He had two young daughters. He was from the Mount Druitt area. He was known to police but he did not have an extensive criminal record according to police and he certainly didn't have any gang affiliations.
05:09His identity has not yet been revealed. So that is as much as we know about him.
05:14The police say that that investigation will now take its course, a critical incident investigation with oversight from the police watchdog.
