MELBOURNE, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA – DECEMBER 8, 1987 Massacre known as the Queen Street massacre took place in the Australia Post building at 191 Queen Street in downtown Melbourne, Australia. The perpetrator was 22-year-old Frank Vitkovic, a former law student and promising tennis player, who killed eight people, wounded five others, and ultimately committed suicide by jumping from the building’s 11th floor. The total death toll therefore reached nine, including the perpetrator.
Frank Vitkovic
The investigation showed that Vitkovic had originally gone to the office of his former classmate and friend, Con Margelis, whom he apparently blamed for his personal failures. When he attempted to shoot him, the firearm jammed, allowing Margelis to escape. Vitkovic then began firing indiscriminately at employees on several floors of the building. He moved between floors using both the elevator and the stairwells, and most of his victims were Australia Post employees.
On the 11th floor, several employees decided to intervene. Although some of them were shot themselves, they managed to overpower the perpetrator and wrest an modified M1 semi-automatic carbine from his hands. Injured employee Rosemary Spiteri then hid the firearm in a refrigerator so the attacker could not retrieve it. Vitkovic then smashed a window and climbed onto the building’s ledge. One of the employees tried to hold him by the legs, but the perpetrator broke free and fell from the 11th floor onto the street below, where he died. For their bravery, Tony Gioia and Frank Carmody were later awarded Australia’s Star of Courage.
The investigation found no evidence of accomplices. The motive was never conclusively established, but experts concluded that the attack was driven by a combination of severe mental health problems, depression, suicidal and homicidal thoughts, and frustration over personal and academic failures. Vitkovic had already been seeing a university psychologist a year before the massacre, to whom he admitted experiencing depression and suicidal thoughts, but he did not complete his treatment.
The massacre deeply shocked Australian society. It became one of the worst mass shootings in the country’s history and, together with other attacks in the late 1980s, contributed to the debate over tightening firearm laws in the state of Victoria. Many Australians still describe it as the event that ended the belief that such acts only happened overseas.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Street_massacre
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