Man killed, pregnant woman among two shot in Wallerfield attack

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

An ear­ly morn­ing shoot­ing in Moo­nan Road, Waller­field, led to the death of a 34-year-old man and the wound­ing of two oth­ers, in­clud­ing his preg­nant girl­friend, rel­a­tives say.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the home yes­ter­day, where rel­a­tives of An­tho­ny Fran­cis, alias “Smalls”, con­firmed he was shot and killed by a gun­man as he slept just be­fore 2 am.

Rel­a­tives said the at­tack­er point­ed his gun through Fran­cis’ bed­room win­dow and shot him.

His girl­friend and an­oth­er man were wound­ed dur­ing the at­tack.

Fran­cis’ younger broth­er, Lar­ry Fran­cis, said he was deeply hurt by the in­ci­dent and con­firmed that his broth­er was re­cent­ly re­leased from po­lice cus­tody as part of en­quiries in­to cars that were van­dalised in the neigh­bour­hood.

He ac­knowl­edged that while he and his broth­er have had dif­fi­cul­ties with the law, they were do­ing their best to keep their busi­ness le­gal by rais­ing live­stock in the neigh­bour­hood.

“I can’t say we in­no­cent, we live life, we do things in life... but I thank God for be­ing able to be out­side and alive.”

He not­ed that his broth­er’s girl­friend’s in­fant son, from a pre­vi­ous re­la­tion­ship, was al­so on the bed when the shoot­ing be­gan and nar­row­ly es­caped the gun­fire, but was grate­ful that he es­caped un­harmed.

“They fence out we yard, they shoot a man here, they shoot him (Fran­cis), he gyal there... it had a child in the room... thank God the child lived.”

When asked if he was op­ti­mistic that the po­lice would find his broth­er’s killers, the younger Fran­cis would on­ly say, “They could do their thing, but I know it have a God.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent who was at home when the shoot­ing be­gan said he re­called hear­ing the gun­fire.

He said af­ter a few mo­ments, he saw one of the wound­ed men run­ning in­to his room.

“I was just try­ing to fig­ure out what was go­ing on when one of my friends ran in the room say­ing he got shot.

“Then I no­ticed he had two bul­let wounds in his foot.

“When I run across to see what was go­ing on, I see both of them (Fran­cis and his girl­friend) on the ground bleed­ing.”

The man said he was fear­ful for his own safe­ty as he re­flect­ed on how un­ex­pect­ed the shoot­ing had been and con­sid­ered leav­ing the neigh­bour­hood for his own safe­ty.

“Right now I un­com­fort­able... I want to see if I can spend a night out of here un­til next week.

“I don’t think any­thing might hap­pen now be­cause there will be a lot of at­ten­tion as the scene is so fresh, but I will put my­self in a gear and get out of the scene.”

At Fran­cis’ home, rel­a­tives were seen burn­ing blood­stained blan­kets and sheets in the back­yard as they al­so mopped up blood­stains in the bed­room.

Rel­a­tives al­so point­ed to the bro­ken bed­room win­dow from where the gun­man was able to car­ry out his at­tack.

Po­lice from the Re­gion II Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing en­quiries.