In January 1968, Insp Les Bardwell and I attended the most bizarre and dangerous situation I had encountered in my career.

A Polish migrant Bruno Kotlinski was driven to Mt Cotton by a cab driver who was told to wait as he left the cab and went to the back door of a residence. The cab driver then heard several shots being fired.

The fare and a woman were forced into the cab and when he drove off he heard a gun shot in the cab. When the cab stopped the two people left the cab and the woman managed to escape as another car slowed down and picked her up.

The owners of the house said that the when Kotlinksi found the back door locked he fired shots through the glass door.

Later that day a farmer found the body of a male person beside a fence in a nearby property. He told the police he could see yellow wires leading from under a jumper.

We responded to the scene and deceased was Kotlinski, he had a sawn off .22cal semi automatic rifle in one hand and another sawn of . 22cal single shot rifle which had a 6cm barrel, no woodwork or trigger guard which was later found in his trouser pocket.

The yellow wires were detonator wires and he was lying on an airways bag which contained sticks of gelignite. 

On carefully cutting the clothing it could be seen two wires leading down his arm into the bag and two more wires leading into his top shirt pocket which contained a battery with  one wire connected to the positive terminal  of the battery.

Further examination of the bag showed four wires leading into it as well. Sticks of gelignite could also been seen in the bag.

I acquired a 100lb breaking strain fishing line with a large hook from a nearby neighbour and our next task was to endeavour to remove the detonator wires from the battery and bag remotely. 

After many attempts this was accomplished. Before we were certain the situation was safe much of his clothing was cut and remotely removed moved from his upper body.

During the two hour task of safely separating the detonators and the  gelignite we were in constant communication with one another with Les Bardwell cutting away at the clothing and me using the hook and line to separate components of the bomb.

In the bag there was a plastic bag containing three sticks of gelignite in which two electric detonators were inserted and there were another six sticks in the bag, 9 sticks in total.

Once the explosive  components were safely dismantled an examination of the deceased disclosed that there was a bullet wound to his femoral artery. This would have been caused by the accidental discharge of the sawn off rifle which had no trigger guard in his trousers pocket as he was getting through the fence. 

The other semi automatic sawn off rifle had jammed through a misfeed .

The gelignite and the detonators were wired to allow the deceased set off the explosives if he was apprehended. Another lucky day for all.

There were some hairy moments during the exercise and we were short on equipment needed to make our job easier.

It was not until both of us attended the first Police EOD Course at Bandiana some 15 years later that we become more aware of ways to better handle situations such as this.

During my career I would rate this the most dangerous crime scene I was to attend, after every step there was an unknown result. Careful planning and execution enabled a successful conclusion.

 Kotslinski lying beside fence

 Hook and line in use

 Sawn off rifle found in trouser pocket