Under-fire Queensland Police claim they did not specify the race of a man wanted for scalding a baby boy with hot coffee in Hanlon Park, Brisbane, to avoid “biased leads”.
Police have been criticised for taking a politically correct approach and refusing to describe the suspect as Asian, after admitting the man was able to fly out of Australia undetected after the cowardly and unprovoked attack on August 27.
Former Australian Federal Police detective superintendent David Craig told 7 News on Tuesday that detectives should have immediately told the public they were looking for a man of Asian appearance.
But police defended their decision to describe him only as a “tanned man” in a statement, although they did not address their failure to publicly appeal to Asian immigrant communities during the failed manhunt:
“As the identity of the man was unknown throughout the early stages of this investigation, a brief description of his appearance was provided to solicit as much information from the public as possible and not create a bias within any generated leads.”
Mr Craig said that human intelligence was vital in cases such as this one, and that information needed to be provided to the public as soon as possible.
“When a baby has been injured … we need to call out exactly who we are looking for,” he said.
“These are not racial vilification terms, these are identifying terms. He should have been called out as a man of Asian appearance, just like we do with … a person of Caucasian appearance. It didn’t happen quick enough in this case.”
Detective Inspector Paul Dalton confirmed on Monday that the 33-year-old foreign national flew out of Sydney using his own passport on September 1, but refused to reveal the man’s name or nationality.
It is unclear why police waited another eight days to inform the public and the family that the man, described as an “itinerant worker” had escaped.
The Asian man is subject to an arrest warrant for acts intending to cause grievous bodily harm after pouring a thermos full of hot coffee onto nine-month-old Luka in Stones Corner, leaving him with severe burns and requiring skin grafts.
Police released CCTV footage of the man the following day, but did not describe his ethnicity or appeal publicly to Asian immigrant communities for help.
Det Insp Dalton said the police were “devastated” by their failure to stop the man from fleeing the country, and appealed for members of the public to come forward now that he was gone, saying they faced “no judgement”.
Police are still trying to find the man’s car, and determine where he stayed in Brisbane before driving to Sydney.
The man has no known family members in Australia, and had travelled in and out of the country on working and holiday visas since 2019, and had addresses in the outer suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, which have large Asian immigrant populations. Former colleagues have been interviewed.
And while police have been unable to identify a motive, they said the man was “aware of police methodologies” and had been “conducting counter-surveillance activities” which made the investigation “quite complex”.
Det Insp Dalton did not specify what measures the man took to avoid detection, saying only that he was “aware of what we do to find people”.
Luka’s shattered family spoke out after the police admission, saying that while the were relieved they were no longer in danger from the man, they were devastated to hear that he had managed to get away.
“It sounds like they were very, very close in catching him, and this obviously means that we’re going to have to wait who knows how long to get justice for our son,” his mother said.
The father said his son was in good spirits despite undergoing a pre-skin graft procedure, but that he may need more skin grafts on his chest and neck.
