At Least Four People Have Been Killed in a Darwin Shooting

At least four people have been killed during a shooting spree in Darwin, ending with a 45-year-old man taken into custody, according to local police.

Northern Territory police duty superintendent Lee Morgan said officers received a number of calls regarding shots being fired in the city’s central business district at about 5.50 PM local time, followed by reports of shots being fired in the neighbouring inner city suburb of Stuart Park, according to The Guardian. The alleged offender was sighted in the nearby suburb of Woolner before being arrested without incident in Stuart Park at about 6:45 PM.

“At this stage we’ve got reports of four deceased and a number of other people who have been shot,” superintendent Morgan said. The gunman was earlier described as caucasian, wearing a high-vis shirt, and driving a white dual-cab ute.

Witness Leah Potter said a woman was shot through her hotel room door by a man with a pump-action shotgun at the Palms Motel, on Darwin's Esplanade, at about 6 PM. She was in the carpark of a neighbouring hotel when she saw the woman’s boyfriend

“I heard what I thought were fireworks going off, really loud cracking, banging fireworks," she told the ABC. "And then a man came running with a woman in his arms from next door which is the Palms Motel, which is the motel next to my motel, and he just dropped her on the footpath right in front of us… so the boyfriend dropped the bleeding woman in front of us and he ran over to the Coles Express to get the police.”

Leah said she “ran and got some towels and wrapped up her [the victim’s] legs, she had little holes all in her skin on both her legs and she was bleeding everywhere."

Facebook user John Rose claims to have witnessed a man shoot up the Palms Hotel.

"We witnessed the man walk through the hotel shooting 10 times and then get into his truck and drive away," he wrote. "This guy had a sawn-off pump-action shotgun. We watched him like 20 feet away calmly walk into the hotel room, shoot the door open and then proceeded to shoot up every room."

The alleged shooter was eventually tackled by police at a city roundabout and arrested. While four people have been confirmed dead and two injured, police were unable to confirm whether there were more injuries or fatalities as a result of the incident.

“We’re still working through a number of crime scenes,” superintendent Morgan told news.com.au, “so we still don’t know if there are others.”

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