NSW Police sergeants Carter Knyvett and Karen Peasley faced a crossbow attacker during the Tenterfield siege in 2012. Photo / News Limited
When someone ran into Australia’s Tenterfield Police Station on April Fool’s Day, 2012, to report that someone was shooting at members of a commune with a bow and arrow at a remote property near Rocky River, Sergeant Carter Knyvett called for backup before attending the scene.
The backup came in the form of his de facto partner, Sergeant Karen Peasley, who was the only other officer available.
What the couple experienced when they arrived was, as former Deputy State Coroner Hugh Dillon describes it, “nightmarish”.
“Usually when police are involved in some sort of scenario and someone dies, they’ve come upon a scene where someone’s threatening others,” he tells Gary Jubelin on this week’s episode of the former-homicide cop’s I Catch Killers podcast.
“In this case, [the offender] was actually hunting the police themselves. It put me in mind of the film Deliverance.”
Dillon, who presided over the coronial inquest into the case, saw more than 300 cases during his time as a coroner and will never forget the “terrifying” set of circumstances of the Tenterfield crossbow attack in New South Wales.
Earlier that afternoon, 33-year-old Ryan Pringle had posted a status on his Facebook page that read: “going hunting be back when i have enough food for winter [sic]”.
He then approached the property, on which members of the “Rainbow Family” commune had gathered for a month-long celebration of the group’s values of “peace, love and harmony”, and almost immediately became aggressive.
According to reports, he then took 10 members hostage, assaulted them and threatened them with a knife and his crossbow. Because there was no phone reception at the property, it wasn’t until a few campers escaped and drove into Tenterfield that police could even be notified.
Jubelin, who was called to attend as a senior investigating officer on the critical incident team, describes his recollection of the “very brave” actions of officers Knyvett and Peaseley.
“[The property] was about an hour’s drive out from town in a very remote location with no communication, not just police radio, but telephones – there were black spots all over the place,” he says.
“[Knyvett and Peaseley] get out there and Ryan’s decided to start stalking them.
“I thought they were very brave in that they went and gathered up all the people at the festival and got them all to travel out. It was like a wagon train, getting everyone to pack up their gear and get in their vans and follow the police car.”
“Then, just as they’re about to move off – this is late at night and pitch black out there – Ryan’s come out of the shadows and started calling out to police and threatening to kill them.”
This “hunt” went on for some time, with police unable to turn on their torches to locate Pringle, lest they make themselves more of a target.
“The police were trying to protect a whole gaggle of people who were simply there for a good weekend,” says Dillon.
“They were ordinary country police, just decent people trying to protect members of the community. And suddenly they’re being hunted for their lives.”
Eventually, after Pringle approached the van where police were sheltering and there was a chase; Peasley deployed her taser, which missed, and Knyvett shot Pringle to prevent him from shooting them both with the crossbow.
“I think it gave me a lot of respect for what country cops do,” adds Jubelin.
“There wasn’t any backup for them – the communications – it was an hour or two before other police came by. You’ve got the other people in the situation, someone’s just been shot with critical injuries and they’re left there dealing with all that. I think [Sgt Knyvett] told me he wasn’t sure if the rest of the community were going to attack him after the shot [that killed Pringle]. Just a horrendous situation.”
After a critical incident investigation that heard several witness testimonies from members of the Rainbow Family, all of whom reported that officers had continually pleaded with Pringle to drop the crossbow, telling him they did not want to get hurt, both officers went on to receive bravery awards for their actions.
Although, says Jubelin, some members of the “eclectic” group provided colourful memories with their approach to courthouse attire.
“There was this one particular person that was a witness to this situation who didn’t believe in wearing clothes,” he says.
“Clothes just weren’t his scene. And I don’t think you realise, as the Deputy State Coroner, how much work we had to do behind the scenes to get that witness to appear in court with some clothes on.”
Along with being at the coalface of human tragedy through his coronial career, Dillon’s time trying to understand death has left him desperate for things to change within the system.
Dillon says one major failing in the current system is that while about 8000 deaths are reported annually in NSW, only about 100 inquests are held.
“Around 40% of the reported deaths are due to unnatural causes,” he says. “We don’t really investigate enough accidents, I think, to learn all the lessons that could be learned. Ideally, a coronial system should really, thoroughly investigate all the fatal accidents that occur, and try to put them into patterns or identify trends so that we can pull out lifesaving lessons.”
He adds that while investment into increased coronial inquests might seem steep, the impacts could actually be economically beneficial.
“One thing that people don’t often think about – and frankly, I didn’t think about when I was a coroner, but I have thought about since – is the economic value of a human life,” he says.
“The Australian Government puts an economic value on Australian life, and it’s called the ‘value of a statistical life’. And that, in 2024, was estimated to be $5.7 million. One year of life is valued by actuaries at around $240,000 or $250,000.”
Dillon argues thoroughly investigating the causes of accidents should be regarded as an investment in lifesaving.
“If we could save more lives, if we can prevent more accidents, then it would be obviously good for the families and the community in general if this human cost wasn’t spent or incurred, but there’s also a value to the economy,” he says.
“If you think about it, we have 3000 unnatural deaths a year. That’s possibly $15 billion. Just putting it in dollar terms, which is a very crude and unsatisfactory way to put it, is really worth looking at.
“This is not just a lot of grief and a lot of sadness. It’s an enormous cost to the society that we live in.”