Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
From tragic accidents and fires to criminal activity and workplace incidents, the state's emergency services were kept busy in 2014. PATRICK BILLINGS reports.
JANUARY:
● The New Year starts tragically for Queenstown when Michael Welsh becomes the third person to die in as many weeks at the Mount Lyell Copper mine. The 53-year-old is killed in an underground mud rush. The mine would close later in the year.
● Forty-one-year-old Jason William McPherson is shot dead in a Kingston home. His alleged killer pleads not guilty and is verbally abused when appearing in court.
● A Launceston night prowler is jailed for burglary after confessing to breaking into homes and watching the victims as they sleep. Two women reported waking up to find the man staring at them. He takes off with various property when they wake up.
● Bridport turns ugly on Australia Day with sporadic violence. Launceston's Lucas Crawford, 17, is hospitalised after being hit from behind with a heavy object.
FEBRUARY:
● The former government announces men convicted for historical "gay crimes" will get the chance to have those convictions expunged.
● Sorrell mother Jodi Michele Eaton's body is found in a shallow grave in the Derwent Valley. A man is charged with murder and pleads not guilty.
● A nine-week-old baby from Deloraine dies in hospital from suspected head injuries. The child's father pleads not guilty to the alleged murder.
● Tasmania's toxic poppy crop claims the life of a Danish tourist who uses the pain reliever precursor to make tea.
● A police raid in West Launceston nabs an alleged $500,000 worth of methamphetamine. Police were tipped off after a man was allegedly sexually abused with a beer bottle and a broom handle. Two men are charged but deny all allegations.
● Fire guts a home at Rowella causing loud explosions, leaving the occupying family homeless. A car is also destroyed in the blaze. The West Tamar community pulls together to help raise money for the Stumpe family.
● Ravenswood Facebook outlaws Cameron Brasher and Tereza Loone cause methamphetamine mayhem when they spark a five hour manhunt in Poatina. The culmination of a months-long ice binge sees Brasher fire on police with a sawn-off shotgun. Police respond with the secretive special operations group, the SOGGIES, and deploy the armoured Bearcat vehicle. The duo are apprehended and later plead guilty to a variety of offences.
MARCH:
● An anonymous caller threatens to kill the wife of the police union president Pat Allen in the lead-up to the state election. The caller is never found.
● Northern detectives seize an estimated $200,000 to $300,000 worth of methamphetamine at Launceston Airport.
● Launceston teenager Katelyn Taylor drowns on the Sunshine Coast where she is studying at university. The 19-year-old is remembered for her "heart of gold".
● An ex-cop involved in a threesome at the scene of a murder-suicide in Devonport hours before the shooting is convicted for failing to tell detectives he was there.
● A man suffers burns in an explosion that tears through a meat rendering factory at Cressy.
● A deliberately-lit fire causes $100,000 damage at the junior campus of the Launceston Church Grammar School at East
Launceston.
APRIL
● Roy Frederick James, 53, of Westbury, is jailed for a maximum of 15 months for stealing more than $90,000 from the Northern Tasmania Cricket Association where he worked.
● Serial burglar John Nicholas Etchell, 31, appears in court for stealing nearly $60,000 worth of gold bullion and other valuables from a home in Burnie.
● Five bullets are fired into a man's car in Brookdale Street, Norwood, over an apparent love dispute.
MAY
● Adrian Wayne Smillie is jailed for 21 years for the murder of Benjamin Maxwell who he stabbed 18 times on Christmas Day 2012 in Devonport.
● A man kidnaps a 12-year-old girl in Latrobe and sexually assaults her in his van before releasing her. Police are yet to charge anyone.
● Two men storm the Campbell Town Hotel with a pistol and wooden stick, forcing staff to hand over an undisclosed amount of cash.
● Geoffrey Keith Turner appears in court for allegedly possessing $16,000 of fake US currency. Mr Turner pleads not guilty and claims to be the victim of a West African romance scam which prosecutors don't dispute.
JUNE
● The Launceston drug squad raids a room in a top Launceston hotel finding $130,000 in cash and an estimated $200,000 worth of ice. The bust brings the amount of amphetamine-type drugs seized in 2013-14 to more than three kilograms - a tenfold increase.
● An unknown number of shots are fired at the driver of a Holden Commodore in Kings Meadows from another Commodore.
● A self-styled "independent researcher" from Kings Meadows is fined for possessing child pornography. Robert Karl Yohan Stonjek, 55, claims the pornography was to assist his study of deviant sexual behaviour. The jury don't believe him, however Justice Robert Pearce finds the material was not used for Stonjek's sexual satisfaction.
● A founding member of a Ben Lomond ski club, Ian Leslie Milne, 61, is given a suspended jail term for sexually assaulting a teenager several decades ago.
● An inquest hears Deloraine man Donald Clarke, who is discharged from the Launceston General Hospital shortly before he dies, was a "high-risk patient" who should never have been sent home.
● St Mary's Outlaw Motorcycle Club member Sean Trigg is allegedly stabbed to death in Bridgewater. His funeral attracts Outlaws from all over Australia.
JULY
● The Heidari family lose nearly everything in a house fire just five weeks after leaving Afghanistan for Launceston. The family of 13 are uninjured.
● Police seize more than $1 million in ice, ecstasy and LSD in four raids over 10 days in Launceston.
● A George Town man hijacks an ambulance while it's taking him to hospital. The paramedics bail after activating the distress signal.
● Fifteen-year-old Brittany Goss, from Sidmouth, is killed after being hit by a car while crossing the West Tamar Highway. The popular student is remembered as someone who "loved being loved and loved to love back".
● A Launceston mother and son die in a head on collision with a truck on the Midland Highway near Ross. Chris and Elaine Hoskinson were returning from a visit with a terminally ill relative in Hobart when their car veered in front of a fully-laden log truck.
● A joint police operation with international connections results in the largest drug haul in Tasmanian history. More than $10 million worth of amphetamine is seized in Hobart, and a further $10 million in Queensland that police allege was on its way to the state.
AUGUST
● A 63-year-old woman is killed after a tree falls on her during a severe storm at Trevallyn.
● Launceston police forensics officer Senior Constable Rodney Walker spends three weeks in Holland identifying the victims of downed Malaysian Airlines Flight 17. The plane was shot down in July in the Ukraine killing all 298 aboard, including 38 Australians.
SEPTEMBER
● A man barricades himself into a home in Newnham refusing to leave as police call in negotiators. Police shut off the street but the siege ends peacefully.
● Launceston Deputy Mayor Jeremy Ball is killed in a collision on the Bass Highway near Prospect.
His death sparks tributes from dignitaries and the public across the state.
● Commander Brett Smith is appointed the North's top police officer replacing the newly appointed Assistant Commissioner Richard Cowling.
OCTOBER
● A 15-year-old Burnie girl dies after a car she's travelling in plunges off a 30-metre cliff at Strahan. The teenager is one of three passengers in the car.
● Police seize more than $550,000 worth of ice allegedly taped to a woman's body at Launceston Airport.
NOVEMBER
● A quick-thinking onlooker saves surrounding boats as flames engulf a $190,000 cruiser at Launceston's Seaport.
● Evandale mother of six Maureen Flanagan is killed in a collision at Western Junction. David Holmyard, 25, is charged with manslaughter of the 54-year-old Evandale resident after police allege he drove into her vehicle.
● A Launceston man is crushed while feeding waste paper into a compressor machine at Woolston at Western Junction.
● In a bizarre double murder two men kill each other near Hobart in what appears to be a drug-related dispute.
DECEMBER
● Police allege they've claimed the scalp of a large drug ring in Launceston with Northern CIB seizing nearly $600,000 worth of ice and $200,000 worth of stolen property.
● Parts of Invermay are shut down when a man allegedly leads police on a car chase. Police deploy road spikes and the alleged driver is apprehended in Mayne Street.
● Police net more than $200,000 worth of methamphetamine in a drug bust at Launceston's Seaport.
Five police reportedly storm the hotel room after receiving a tip-off about a fraudulent credit card.
● A 19-year-old Blackstone Heights woman is killed on Christmas morning in a single-vehicle crash. The teenager is pronounced dead at the scene after her Honda Civic flipped on to its roof in Panorama Road.
● A 45-year-old Campbell Town man dies when the 5.5-metre boat he is skippering capsizes in high swells on the notorious St Helens barway. The man's sons, aged 12 and 16, and a 15-year-old family friend, are rescued.
● Pilot Sam Langford, 29, and photographer Tim Jones, 61, die when their Cessna ditches in to into waters off Tasmania's south-east. Mr Jones was taking photos of the racing yachts in the Sydney to Hobart at the time. The recovery operation develops into a prolonged interstate mission.