An American man named Donald Day Jr., accused of communicating with an Australian family with delusional beliefs that led to them killing three individuals, has opposed to Queensland police testifying at his trial. Day, from Arizona, was arrested by FBI agents in December 2023 and charged with making threats to public figures and law enforcement agents, as well as the possession of prohibited firearms. He entered pleas of not guilty to all charges in the Arizona district court in May 2024.
It is alleged that Day sent messages about a “Christian end-of-days ideology” known as premillennialism to the Train family in Queensland between May 2021 and December 2022. Two brothers from the Train family, Nathaniel and Gareth Train, used high-powered rifles in an ambush to kill constables Matthew Arnold, 26, and Rachel McCrow, 29, at a remote property at Wieambilla, west of Brisbane, on December 12, 2022. Nathaniel Train, along with his sibling’s wife Stacey, 45, then fatally shot neighbor Alan Dare, 58, shortly after killing the two constables.
Day’s lawyer, Jon Sands, filed a pre-trial motion in a US district court in Arizona, requesting certain evidence be deemed inadmissible. This includes testimony from eight Queensland police officers presented by the prosecution. Sands argued that controlling the admissibility of evidence about the Trains and the shooting, in which Day bears no responsibility, is necessary to ensure a fair trial for Day.
Sands accused Australian authorities of targeting Day for actions and speech that are legal in the US, as all the actual suspects in the case are deceased. He suggested that the court limit the evidence about the Wieambilla shooting to a stipulated statement of facts, providing the context needed for the government’s case without requiring emotionally charged testimony from Australian law enforcement officials.
A coronial inquest into the shootings in 2024 revealed that the Trains held paranoid beliefs, including the belief in a final battle with Satan and that police were “demons” who would transform the family into mindless slaves.
Day is scheduled to stand trial in a US district court in late April.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/mar/18/donald-day-jr-seeks-to-bar-australian-police-from-testifying-at–ntwnfb
