Queensland Police have admitted they failed to stop an Asian immigrant who attacked a baby with hot coffee in Brisbane from fleeing the country.
Detective Inspector Paul Dalton confirmed on Monday that the 33-year-old foreign national flew out of Sydney using his own passport on September 1, but refused to reveal the man’s name or nationality.
It is unclear why police waited another eight days to inform the public and the family that the man, described as an “itinerant worker” had escaped.
The Asian man is subject to an arrest warrant for acts intending to cause grievous bodily harm after pouring a thermos full of hot coffee onto a nine-month-old boy named Luka at Hanlon Park in Stones Corner on August 27, leaving him with severe burns and requiring skin grafts.
Police released CCTV footage of the man the following day, but did not describe his ethnicity or appeal publicly to Asian immigrant communities for help.
They have now confirmed that the man travelled to Sydney by car after the attack, was in New South Wales by August 28, and boarded an international flight on August 31, 12 hours before police identified him and obtained the warrant on September 1.
Det Insp Dalton said the police were “devastated” by their failure to stop the man from fleeing the country, and appealed for members of the public to come forward now that he was gone, saying they faced “no judgement”.
Police are still trying to find the man’s car, and determine where he stayed in Brisbane before driving to Sydney.
The man has no known family members in Australia, and had travelled in and out of the country on working and holiday visas since 2019, and had addresses in the outer suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, which have large Asian immigrant populations. Former colleagues have been interviewed.
And while police have been unable to identify a motive, they said the man was “aware of police methodologies” and had been “conducting counter-surveillance activities” which made the investigation “quite complex”.
Det Insp Dalton did not specify what measures the man took to avoid detection, saying only that he was “aware of what we do to find people”.
Luka’s shattered family spoke out after the police admission, saying that while the were relieved they were no longer in danger from the man, they were devastated to hear that he had managed to get away.
“It sounds like they were very, very close in catching him, and this obviously means that we’re going to have to wait who knows how long to get justice for our son,” his mother said.
The father said his son was in good spirits despite undergoing a pre-skin graft procedure, but that he may need more skin grafts on his best and neck.