Suburban shootout

Two SA police officers were plain lucky to survive a backstreet gunfight with a long-time criminal nearly three years ago. But would their survival of the aftermath prove to be a tougher challenge than the shooting?

Matt De Sira had no time to bellow the standard commands of “Police, don’t move!” and “Drop the gun!” It was too late. Desperate serial bank robber, Harry Nylander, had already raised his pistol and fired a shot at De Sira’s partner, Malcolm Racz.

So, in the mid-afternoon quiet of a Brompton cul-de-sac, De Sira, then 32, drew his revolver and returned fire: two shots in rapid succession. The first seemed to miss its mark; the second raised a mysterious cloud of green mist from around Nylander’s upper torso.

De Sira dived for cover behind a Colt parked on the front lawn of a house to his right. Nylander ducked down behind the front of the stolen blue Pulsar he had moments before driven into the cul-de-sac.

But had that second shot penetrated Nylander’s chest, or only hit something he had held in his free hand? And, more important, had 36-year-old Racz survived, or taken the bullet fired directly at him? De Sira, who could see him neither standing nor crouching by the police car, believed the worst.

“I thought Malcolm was dead,” he says. “So, when I took up cover behind the car, I thought I was by myself. I was thinking: ‘Is he (Nylander) reloading? I hope I’ve got enough bullets left if this guy comes out and starts firing at me’.”

Neither De Sira nor Racz ever suspected that their day shift of August 16, 2000, would, with only an hour to go, end in a gunfight. Nor did they suspect that such a deadly confrontation would begin with a seemingly routine code 404 (suspect loitering). But it began exactly that way, at 2:30pm.

A member of the public had called the police to report that a man, seated on a park bench in the Port Road median strip at Hindmarsh, appeared suspicious. He had, the caller said, been there – opposite a Westpac bank – earlier that day, in different clothes.

De Sira and Racz responded to the call. At the park bench they found Nylander, whom they could never know was about to shoot at them in a nearby backstreet. Racz engaged him in a short conversation, in which Nylander gave a name and address that would later prove false.

Both officers felt uneasy about the quietly spoken Nylander who, under his hat and wrap-around sunglasses, never looked into either officer’s eyes. They found that he had a clearly nervous disposition, taped hands, and a bulge under and toward the rear of his jacket.

“I wasn’t expecting it to be a handgun,” says De Sira. “A lot of people carry their mobile phones on their hips, and it was consistent with that. Whether it was something actually causing it to bulge, or just a fold in the material, I wasn’t sure.”

But how could Nylander explain the tape that covered the fingers and palms of each of his hands? He claimed he used it to play handball. This explanation struck the officers as curious, but both had to accept that it could also be legitimate.

They listened to Nylander explain how someone had dropped him off, and that he often sat on the park bench. The officers also ran checks on the name he supplied – John Graham Palmer – which emerged as “clean”.

After 10-odd minutes of conversation, there remained no grounds on which De Sira and Racz could act against Nylander. Says Racz: “I couldn’t really pick anything that I could see was definitely wrong, and you can’t just search people in the middle of Port Rd on a whim.”

So, Racz wound up the conversation, left Nylander at the bench and went back to his patrol car with De Sira. In the car, each expressed his certainty to the other that something was wrong.

By now, they had watched Nylander walk from the median strip, cross Port Rd and disappear between the Westpac bank and an adjacent building. Their coppers’ instincts, however, told them to explore further, so the pair decided to follow him.

De Sira and Racz drove from the median strip, took the first right into Coglin St and began to cruise the backstreets of Brompton. Within only moments, they spotted Nylander in the blue Pulsar.

“I just looked at him, and said: ‘That’s him!’ ” says De Sira. “He’d taken his hat off, but still had the sunglasses on. But you could see his eyes, as if (with shock) they were wider than the sunglasses, like: ‘Oh, shit, the police!’ ”

De Sira U-turned the patrol car and started to follow Nylander through the narrow Brompton backstreets. Each time Nylander had to slow down to turn, he braked late and sped up again rapidly.

The officers tailed him through several streets, until he finally turned into Pens Close. De Sira and Racz pulled into the small, winding cul-de-sac only moments later. By then, Nylander had crouched down beside the open driver’s door of the Pulsar.

“He was looking back at us,” says De Sira. “I thought: ‘Oh, no. This has gone really bad. Something’s happening here’.”

De Sira stopped the police car only about eight metres behind the Pulsar and got out just ahead of Racz. In an instant, Nylander stood up, screamed at the officers as he stepped toward the back of the Pulsar, raised his gun and fired at Racz!

Left and right: officers set up string lines at the scene of the shooting.

De Sira reacted instantly. “I just saw the gun,” he says, “and it was pointing towards Malcolm, so I thought: ‘I’ve got no choice in it. I’ve just got to draw my firearm and do what I’m trained to do’.

“I just dropped my keys on the roadway, pulled my gun out and took my shots at him. By that time, he’d already fired his shot at Malcolm.

“There was no time to challenge him (verbally), because he’d already overstepped that point. It was just a case of: ‘Pull the gun out and instinctively fire some shots to stop him’.”

Racz, before he stepped out of the patrol car, had not seen Nylander’s initial movements. “I hopped out of the car, shut the door and he was at the back corner of his car (with) this firearm pointed straight at me,” says Racz. “That’s the first thing I saw, and it immediately discharged.

“I thought: ‘Shit, what the hell is going on?’ And, there’s been this exchange of fire, because I heard the bangs. Then, it was: ‘Straight round to the back of the police car and draw the gun’.

“It took a split second. But, for a moment there, I was, like, ‘hanging out on the clothesline’: high and dry.”

By now, De Sira had also taken cover – on that front lawn to the side of the Colt. Nylander had moved back to a crouching position in front of the Pulsar. De Sira’s greatest concern, however, was that he could neither see nor hear Racz.

He called for back-up, moved toward the back of the Colt and, in the desperate hope of a response from Racz, shouted: “Malcolm, are you there? Are you all right?” To De Sira’s relief, Racz yelled back, saying he was okay. Each officer now knew the other was at least still alive.

De Sira was then able for a moment to glance left toward his partner. He could see that Racz had positioned himself over the police car boot, with his gun drawn and trained on Nylander.

To best position himself to confront the still-present threat of gunfire from Nylander, De Sira started to move up to the front of the Colt.

“Crawling to the front of the car, my life did flash before me,” he says. “I thought about my wife and children, and I was thinking: ‘There’s no way I’m going to die here today on this bit of lawn. There’s no way this is going to be the end of it for me’.

“They (the thoughts) might have only been for half a second, but you see and feel all these things. Then you get back onto the job: ‘Where’s he (Nylander) gone? What’s he going to do next? Am I prepared for what may happen next?’ ”

So De Sira quickly set himself up near the front of the Colt, carefully raised his head and looked directly toward Nylander. He could see only the gunman’s head and shoulders, which were moving in a way that suggested he might be reloading his gun.

With Nylander now in both officers’ gun sights, De Sira yelled: “Throw your weapon away, and come out from the car.” Nylander said nothing, and gave no ground.

Moments later, however, he moved away from the Pulsar – but not to surrender. He instead began a crouched, backward walk up the driveway of the house directly behind him.

As he inched closer to the front of the house, he kept his gun pointed to the ground and his eyes fixed on the officers. But De Sira and Racz kept their guns trained on Nylander.

“We were able to take a shot at him if we wanted to,” says De Sira. “But he’d backed up towards the front door of a house, and there were windows there. The chances were a bullet could have gone astray. I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone who was just in their home watching television.

“However, if he’d decided to raise his firearm and start firing at us again, we would have had no other alternative but to stop him.”

Despite the extreme tension, each officer kept his nerve. Neither would later speak of a racing pulse, sweaty palms or a dry throat. De Sira, as he held his position, was even conscious of, and surprised by, a calm about his body.

“I expected the barrel of my gun to be jumping all around the place,” he says, “and yet it was dead still.

“I think it was very much that your senses all drop. You only use the sense of sight. It’s a bit like tunnel vision, because you’re just concentrating so much on him, and everything else fades out.”

Meanwhile, Nylander had reached the top of the driveway. He stood up just near the home’s side fence, looked toward the officers’ positions and then darted away. A second later, De Sira heard the fence rattle. He realized Nylander had jumped it and fled.

Each officer emerged from his cover, but the drama was not then necessarily over. The pair considered that Nylander might sprint around the neighbouring house and return to his still-running car. But when they heard other fences rattle in the distance, they realized, with some relief, that “he’s leaving the area”.

With Nylander gone, the officers called for support to cordon the area, and began a careful inspection around the Pulsar. On the ground in front of it, they found three live rounds, calico bags and a ruptured spray can that had contained green paint.

It would emerge that the bullet from De Sira’s second shot hit Nylander in his chest, but first pierced the can. This explained the earlier mystery of the green mist.

The officers went on to remove the Pulsar’s keys from its ignition. Among them, they found a post office box key, which would later prove vital in the hunt for Nylander.

To the two lucky-to-be-alive cops, the scene of the shootout painted a crystal clear picture. “After looking at everything,” says De Sira, “I realized that he was obviously going to do an armed hold-up.”

Police from several units soon converged on and around the scene. As some undertook both air and ground searches, others whisked De Sira and Racz away to a nearby command post.

Until well after nightfall, they made notes, typed statements, spoke with internal investigators and consulted Police Association reps. Through these urgent duties, however, each officer managed to call his wife.

De Sira explained what had happened and that he was uninjured. Racz, so as not to concern his wife, deliberately gave her only a “vague” outline of the incident.

For both officers, the day that began on the streets at 7am never ended until near midnight. After De Sira arrived home, he and his wife, Sally, made coffee and talked about the incident until the early hours of the next morning. Then, completely drained, De Sira managed to sleep.

For Racz, sleep was not possible. “I don’t like tossing and turning in bed,” he says, “so the first night I went and watched a lot of TV. The second night, I got an hour or two (of sleep), and the third night I had a huge sleep where I just absolutely crashed.”

On the day after the shooting, both officers returned to work at 8:30am. They returned to the scene, where ballistics officers were erecting string lines to indicate the paths the bullets had taken. One of their findings, a bullet hole in a neighbour’s fence, was to shock De Sira.

“They (the ballistics officers) said: ‘That’s his shot at you’,” says De Sira. “I said: ‘Pardon!? He was only shooting at Malcolm’. They said: ‘No, he took a shot at you, too’.”

The incident would prove to have a lingering impact on both officers over the ensuing months. Each became highly security-conscious and concerned that Nylander remained at large.

Racz never ventured into his local bank without first checking the building and surrounding area. As he shopped, he would wonder: “Is this guy here in the shopping mall at the moment.”

De Sira, as he travelled the streets, came to notice every blue Pulsar within his sight.

But the two cops and their families would soon feel some relief when investigators attached to Operation Manx arrested Nylander five weeks after the shootout.

The arrest had followed an exhaustive investigation, which showed Nylander to be a notorious criminal dubbed the spray-can bandit. During bank robberies, he had sprayed security cameras with green paint.

In late 2002, Nylander faced a District Court trial. De Sira and Racz appeared in November to give evidence, and hear their attacker account for his actions. “Going to court was probably the worst thing of the whole lot,” says De Sira.

“I gave my evidence and found myself getting emotionally upset and had to stop. It was quite a while before I could actually speak because of holding back tears.

“When he gave his evidence, I sat there shaking for about 30 minutes because that was the first time I heard him speak. My legs, chest and arms... everything was just shaking. I was pushing my arms down on my legs to try to stop myself and couldn’t.

“I think all the emotions that, perhaps, I should have felt on the day, all happened in court.”

To both cops’ delight, the jury found Nylander guilty of shooting with intent to do grievous bodily harm. And he had, only days earlier, scored convictions for four armed robberies. He is now serving a 32-year prison sentence with a 24-year non-parole term.

The conviction and sentence brought De Sira and Racz great relief; and, perhaps surprisingly, neither officer emerged with hatred for Nylander. Today, each speaks of simply moving on with his life.

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hating him,” says De Sira. “You end up eating yourself up from inside if you start doing that.”

To Racz, Nylander is simply a “non-person” who, in his mind, does not exist. But, De Sira, with an opportunity to front the criminal who shot at him, knows exactly what he would ask.

“Why he did it,” he says. “Why he decided to stay and fight, and didn’t run. I was only doing my job.”