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2 weeks ago | 
abc.net.au | Lottie Twyford |Ciara Jones
A woman who allegedly lured people from Papua New Guinea to Australia with the promise of fully-funded scholarships has been charged with human trafficking. Australian Federal Police allege the 56-year-old woman forced 15 people — aged between 19 and their late 30s — to work on farms against their will instead of receiving the education they had been promised.
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Jan 14, 2025 | 
abc.net.au | Ciara Jones
Police have charged a 38-year-old man who is accused of a shooting ata home in Eagleby, south of Brisbane which has left a man in an induced coma. It's alleged a number of shots were fired through the glass door of a property on Saverin Road just after 10pm on Saturday night. One of the rounds hit a 36-year-old man in the chest.
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Jan 4, 2025 | 
abc.net.au | Ciara Jones
In the dead of night on September 6, 1981, a dreaded knock came at Horst and Wally Smykalla's door. A policeman was outside, bearing news no parent should have to receive. "I'm sorry," he began, distraught. "There has been a tragedy with Debbie."Horst and Wally listened, stunned. Their middle daughter, Deborah, had been brutally murdered just hours earlier on Father's Day, at her home in Capalaba on Brisbane's bayside.
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Dec 20, 2024 | 
abc.net.au | Ciara Jones
Warning: This story contains details of sexual assault. On a summer Monday night on December 20, 1965, a 59-year-old woman was showering in her apartment in Coorparoo on Brisbane's southside. Outside, in darkness, an opportunistic, calculated criminal lay in wait. He spotted an opening, climbing through a window at the rear of the house into her bedroom.
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Nov 28, 2024 | 
abc.net.au | Ciara Jones
Police have launched a murder investigation after a man was found dead at a home in Ipswich, west of Brisbane. Emergency services were called to Lillian Street at Redbank Plains at about 8:40pm, after the man was found unconscious. He was declared dead at the scene. A 48-year-old man is assisting police. Anyone with information is urged to contact police.
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Nov 18, 2024 | 
abc.net.au | Ciara Jones
Queensland Police have launched a homicide investigation after the death of a man at a Mackay unit complex 10 days ago. A crime scene was declared after the body of 67-year-old John Patrick Hackett was found at his unit on Gold Street on November 9. Officers had been called to the property after Mr Hackett's family members asked them to conduct a welfare check.
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Nov 6, 2024 | 
abc.net.au | Brooke Fryer |Carly Williams |Ciara Jones
The federal government has warned the new Queensland premier to "hold your horses" and not scrap the state's Truth-Telling and Healing Inquiry. "I'd certainly say to the new premier of Queensland, just hold your horses here," the Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy told the ABC's Indigenous Affairs Team while urging the Queensland government to sit down and talk with inquiry members.
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Oct 17, 2024 | 
abc.net.au | Ciara Jones |Talissa Siganto
A teenager who fatally stabbed a stranger with a 40-centimetre knife in Brisbane's inner north has been cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter. David George Connolly, 43, died after being wounded in the chest by the then 17-year-old boy on Newmarket Road in Wilston around midnight on January 22, 2023. Mr Connolly's body was found by passers-by about an hour later.
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Sep 18, 2024 | 
abc.net.au | Ciara Jones
On a spring Friday night in Brisbane on September 19, 1952, an off-duty police officer heard two piercing screams. Constable Alex Stewart and several other residents in the sleepy inner-north suburb of Grange peered out their windows, but none went to investigate, shrugging off the cries as misbehaving teenagers. When the sun rose, Constable Stewart made a shocking discovery that would launch the largest manhunt and police investigation the state had ever seen.
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Sep 9, 2024 | 
abc.net.au | Ciara Jones
Chloe Thompson feared she would never hear her children say, "I love you."Her two sons and daughter – all aged under 10 – have level three autism. Loading... A breakthrough came when the Logan mum enrolled her middle child Delilah, 3, at an AEIOU centre – an early intervention service for kids with autism. "Within a month of going there, she was saying 'I love you, mum'," Ms Thompson said. "She went from a screaming, non-sleeping, non-verbal little girl to the exact opposite within three months.
