Used gun cartridges were scattered around the front seat and floor of the stolen utility truck where a young woman’s body was found in a barrel, police have been told.
Wanted fugitive Zlatko Sikorsky, 34, is believed to have been behind the wheel when the smashed up black Holden V8 roared into The Lodge residential estate in Stapylton, south of Brisbane, on Wednesday afternoon.
The heavily tattooed contract cleaner was being pursued by police investigating the disappearance of missing 16-year-old schoolgirl Larissa Beilby.
While police carried out tests on the body, Ms Beilby’s family told media they would not make a comment until there was a formal outcome.
‘It is all speculation at this stage. We are waiting until we are provided with all the facts from police,’ a family spokesman said.
Police are hunting Zlatko Sikorsky (pictured) to assist with their inquiries after the body of a teenage girl was found in a ute south of Brisbane
Sikorksy is being pursued by police investigating the disappearance of missing 16-year-old schoolgirl Larissa Beilby (pictured)
While police carried out tests on the body, Ms Beilby’s family told media they would not make a comment until there was a formal outcome (pictured: Larissa Beiby’s father, Peter)
Used gun cartridges were scattered around the front seat and floor of the stolen utility truck where a young woman’s body was found in a barrel, police have been told
A resident who witnesses the ute later found to be carrying a woman’s body stuffed inside a barrel, and covered with plastic, said the horrific incident had shocked the estate.
‘It (the truck) screamed along here, you could hear it, it was revving loudly,’ said the female resident of Silky Oak Crescent. ‘It came to a shuddering halt’.
Within a couple of minutes the woman and her husband went to investigate the vehicle, which had smashed windows, a dinged up bonnet and, most alarmingly, shotgun cartridges on the front seat and floor.
‘We’re only ringing you because of the shotgun cartridges,’ the husband and wife told a Triple Zero emergency service operator. There was no sign of the weapon.
‘There was a few cartridges. And some of them looked like they had been used,’ the witness said. ‘That’s why we were freaking out. We thought, “now there’s an armed man in here”.’
A woman and her husband investigated the vehicle – which had smashed windows, a dinged up bonnet and shotgun cartridges on the front seat and floor – after it pulled in to The Lodge residential estate in Stapylton, south of Brisbane
Phil, a resident at the Lodge, stands where the ute was parked. ‘They parked the ute right here’ he said. ‘Didn’t see a lot but heard a lot – he sped really loud’
Eyewitnesses insisted Zikorsky must have had help to enter the estate and said they spotted a number of mystery people ‘around the car’ after it parked, but ‘I don’t know who they were’.
Police have not said how Zikorsky managed to enter the park’s boom gates in the black utility and exit in a silver Holden Commodore.
Visitors need an access pass to drive through the park’s boom gates, and the pass can only be used to enter the complex once, residents said.
Residents also cast doubt on a woman’s account of seeing an arm ‘flapping out’ of a barrel on the back of the utility as it entered the park.
Larissa’s father Peter Beilby lost his wife Karen in 2006, when she died at the age of 32. In the wake of her death, he previously said that his ‘heart and soul are broken’
Detectives initially attended a house in Buccan, south of Brisbane, to question a suspect in relation to a missing person. A body was later found on the back of the ute in Stapylton
The woman told media on Thursday that the ute was badly damaged, ‘the windows were all shot out, bullet holes through the bonnet’.
She then recounted how she and her partner ‘lifted the gate’ and let Zikorsky in.
‘He pulled out a shotgun and said to me and my partner “I’ll give you two grand if you let me in the gate right now” so we lifted up the gate and let him in,’ said the woman, who has reportedly given multiple statements to police.
‘There was a blue barrel with, all I’ve seen is an arm flapping out, it was a little bit scary.
‘There was just the one barrel, it wasn’t massive either, it was only small. I just seen an arm, a dead arm.’
Police were investigating the disappearance of 16-year-old Larissa Beilby (pictured) when they found the black utility truck
The woman spent Thursday morning at the Logan police station, making a formal statement according to the Australian Associated Press.
‘He was a big white dude, tattoos everywhere,’ she said.
‘The bonnet was flipped up over the windscreen, he was right down looking through the arch, I was surprised he was still driving.’
One resident who saw the utility after it parked said: ‘There’s no way you could see an arm or anything’.
The back of the ute was covered, she claimed, and it took police some time to locate the body. The woman denied to neighbours that she had anything to do with the incident, neighbours said.
Another neighbour said of the woman’s ‘arm’ claim: ‘Bulls***’.
Detectives were spotted ducking in and out of a number of properties at the complex on Friday.
The body in the barrel is yet to be formally identified, as has the cause of death. Zikorsky remains on the run.