{"id":40931,"date":"2026-06-29T21:53:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T21:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/40931\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T21:53:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T21:53:08","slug":"police-probe-ramraid-and-suspicious-fire-in-melbournes-south-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/40931\/","title":{"rendered":"Police probe ramraid and suspicious fire in Melbourne’s south-east"},"content":{"rendered":"

Investigators are treating a fire that gutted a business in Melbourne’s south-east overnight as suspicious.<\/p>\n

Emergency services were called to a shopping strip on Lower Dandenong Road in Mentone about 4.10am, where crews found a shop on fire.<\/p>\n

Multiple units worked to extinguish the blaze, which was complicated by live power lines that had caught fire and come down, as well as a ruptured gas line that had caught fire.<\/p>\n

No-one was inside the shop at the time, and no-one was injured in the fire, which was brought under control about 4.28am.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

No-one was inside the shop at the time of the fire. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

Detectives believe offenders rammed a vehicle into the shop before it caught fire, then fled the scene.<\/p>\n

A local Mentone resident said the incident was extremely out-of-character for the suburb.<\/p>\n

“It’s a pretty quiet area, generally this doesn’t happen, it’s a bit shocking,” he told 774 ABC Melbourne radio.<\/p>\n

“It’s terrible for the shops next door, because it’s not just the cigarette shop gets destroyed, it looks like another two shops there.”<\/p>\n

A crime scene is now in place as Victoria Police investigate, and Lower Dandenong Road has been closed to eastbound traffic.<\/p>\n

Anyone who witnessed the incident, has dash cam or CCTV footage or anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or submit an online confidential report online.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Investigators are treating a fire that gutted a business in Melbourne’s south-east overnight as suspicious. Emergency services were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2034,1112,312,32721,844,260,32720,1047,1373],"class_list":["post-40931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-melbourne","tag-arson","tag-attack","tag-crime","tag-dash-cam","tag-fire","tag-melbourne","tag-mentone","tag-police","tag-victoria-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}