Precious cargo safely home

Editorial: Sarah Larsen

Photography: Jesse Wray-McCann and supplied

On a wet August night, Sergeant Smith* and Sergeant Jones* follow the sounds of a revving car engine by the side of a house. Sgt Smith cautiously approaches a fence, peers through a gap and locates the source of the noise.

He sees a man standing at the boot of a car, pulling out blankets and shoving them under the tyres. The man is hurriedly trying to get his car out of the mud.

Sgt Smith is relaying the description back to an investigation team, where rapid decisions are being made.

Within seconds, the man jumps back into the car where the dim interior light has turned on. Sgt Smith can see just enough to confirm he has found the person of interest. And in the back of his car are the two children he has kidnapped.

Less than 12 hours earlier on 23 August 2021, Specialist Operations Group (SOG) sergeants Smith and Jones were attending a meeting at Melbourne’s Victoria Police Centre.

The pair was expecting a quiet Monday morning when their superintendent interrupted to brief them on a developing incident.

Two children, Adilla, 5, and her 3-year-old brother Bilal, were at their Blackburn North home with their mother when a masked man entered the house around 8am.

The man assaulted the woman at knifepoint before taking both children in the boot of the family’s black Mercedes-Benz. Using the mother’s phone, the offender then called the children’s father, who was at work, and demanded a $1 million ransom.

Victoria Police responded by forming Operation Scout; a large contingent of specialists from Armed Crime Squad, State Surveillance Unit and Eastern Region’s Division 1 Investigation and Response team.

Op Scout rapidly called upon the SOG, a highly specialised tactical unit that responds to the state’s most dangerous incidents. Special operators are trained to deal with terrorist threats, sieges and hostage situations that are deemed beyond the capabilities of general duties police.

The SOG quickly mobilised, deploying multiple units to the eastern suburbs, putting to best use their tactical driving skills, formidable teamwork and communication.

As the operation increased in urgency, Op Scout’s management team appealed to the public for information, while police in the field, including sergeants Smith and Jones, followed up potential leads.

“We were very aware of the worst-case scenario being a very possible outcome and were doing everything we could with the information we had,” Sgt Smith said.

“For those of us with kids, the mind naturally goes to ‘what if they were my kids?’.

“But a big thing we train into SOG operators is that we are best at solving problems when we think clearly.”

By the early evening, police had focused their attention on a house in Mitcham, just a 10-minute drive from the children's home, where investigators believed they might locate the person of interest — and hopefully the two children.

With the approval of Op Scout management, the pair ran a close-target reconnaissance of the property, covertly circling the house and reporting their observations to the team.

The SOG tactical responders and other police were on their way.

“As Sgt Jones moved to cover the back of the house and I covered the front, we could hear a car revving the whole time,” Sgt Smith said.

“It was dark, so I was able to follow the sounds and locate the car from behind a fence about three metres away.

“The black Mercedes-Benz matched the description, but I needed to identify the man and still hadn’t located the kids.”

Sgt Smith recalls the man moving to the boot of the car, pulling an armful of blankets out and stuffing them under the tyres.

“I realised then that the car was stuck in the mud,” he said.

“It was a knife’s-edge moment then. Any second, he was going to get that car to move.

“But what really struck me was the number of blankets he had in his boot and what he planned to do with them.

The black Mercedes used in the kidnapping.

“Once the blankets were under the tyre, the man got back in the car and the light came on.

“It was dark, wet and the internal light wasn’t very bright, but I could just see two children’s seats and, in them, two little heads.

“What instantly stood out to me was the girl’s beanie. My daughter, who is the same age, has the exact same colourful beanie. As hard as it was to see inside the car, I couldn’t miss the beanie.”

There was little knowledge of who else may have been inside the house or if weapons were present.

But waiting any longer meant risking a pursuit of the car on wet roads with the siblings in the back seat.

Sgt Smith gave an update on radio before jumping the fence.

As he approached the man and wrestled him to the ground, Sgt Jones was quick to join.

Once the offender was on the ground and the surrounds were secured, Sgt Jones recalls switching to dad-mode as he comforted the kids.

“I guess we tried to do what we would want someone to do for our kids in that situation — talk to them softly, let them know everything is going to be OK,” he said.

“There were some indicators of the type of environment the kids had been through – like the boy’s nappy, which hadn’t been changed all day.

“It may not sound like much but, as a parent, I found that level of disregard disturbing.

“I often think about what might’ve gone through their minds at the time and I really hope they don’t remember it.”

As with all jobs for the SOG, and unlike other police units, operators apprehend and hand over the offenders to Victoria Police colleagues before withdrawing from the area.

The offender was arrested in Mitcham about 12 hours after the children were taken from their home.

In this case, they were also able to hand over the two children who, by now, were giving the sergeants high fives and playing with their police badges.

For sergeants Smith and Jones, this is an incident that will stay with them for the rest of their careers.

“It’s the kind of job that keeps SOG operators turning up to work every day. We want to be the positive difference,” Sgt Smith said.

“But the reason we were able to do what we did was because of the vital work of the investigators.

“A lot of resources were dedicated to that job – I was the lucky one that got to do the best part.”

Special Operations Group police were instrumental in returning the kidnapped children to safety. This image is a digitally-altered re-creation of events.

*Names have been changed to protect the identity of Special Operations Group members.