Police have converged on a shopping centre in Melbourne’s north after shots were fired during an argument between men armed with machetes.<\/p>\n
Craigieburn Central was placed into lockdown at around 7:10pm on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Police were told two groups of males, both armed with machetes, were seen arguing at the shopping centre and two gunshots were heard.<\/p>\n
Martin was at the centre with his six-year-old son.<\/p>\n
He said he saw a group of males wearing masks just outside the food outlet where he was sitting.<\/p>\n
He said some men approached the group and it looked like they were telling them to calm down when a second group of masked males arrived.<\/p>\n
“They ran towards each other and then a shot was heard,” he told the ABC radio program Evenings with David Astle.<\/p>\n
“As soon as the shot was fired \u2026 everybody pulled out massive machetes.<\/p>\n
“They looked like swords; I’ve never seen such large machetes before.”<\/p>\n
Martin said he immediately called the police while other shoppers fled.<\/p>\n
He said there were mainly women and children inside the food outlet.<\/p>\n
“Almost every single one of them were on the floor.<\/p>\n
“I picked up my son, and I saw a lady with her four daughters. Roughly about five or six minutes later, when everything calmed down, they were too scared to leave.”<\/p>\n
A Victoria Police spokesperson said the offenders fled as officers arrived.<\/p>\n
She said there had been no reports of any injuries or any evidence to suggest anyone was hit by the bullets.<\/p>\n
Police are investigating the incident and urged anyone with information to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.<\/p>\n
The ABC has attempted to contact shopping centre management.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police have converged on a shopping centre in Melbourne’s north after shots were fired during an argument between…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":998560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,400045,386031,50,101,400046],"class_list":["post-998559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-australia","tag-craigieburn-central","tag-machetes","tag-news","tag-shooting","tag-shopping-centre-lockdown"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117089419462914177","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=998559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/998560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=998559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=998559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=998559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}