Search for tattooed man after girl's body found in barrel
Police have released an image of a man they wish to speak to in relation to the body of a teenage girl found stuffed inside a barrel on Wednesday.
Queensland Police said in a statement they believe a 34-year-old man may be able to assist them with inquiries.
Zlatko Sikorsky is believed to be driving a silver 2014 Holden Commodore with a sunroof and Queensland registration 966 WKB.
A man fled from a property at Buccan in Logan when they went to investigate a missing person on Wednesday afternoon.
He escaped in a black ute with a barrel loaded onto the tray. Police were able to track it to a mobile home park at Stapylton, 20 minutes away, where officers found the badly decomposed body inside the barrel.
The man was able to get away and police believe he’s now driving a silver Holden Commodore with the registration 966WKB.
One witness said several men fled in that vehicle after taking items out of the ute.
It’s understood police know the victim’s identity, and that she was not from the area where Wednesday’s drama played out. A police social media post about a 16-year-old girl missing from north of Brisbane was recently removed.
A Stapylton resident says neighbours told her they saw two people let the man into the gated mobile home community.
“They were grabbing stuff out of the ute then all of a sudden they jumped in the silver vehicle and took off,” the woman, who wanted to be known only as Sharon, said.
“One of our neighbours, he saw the car parked up there and he went to close the door because the door was left open.
“That is when he noticed there was gun shot shells and knuckle dusters inside the vehicle so he rang the cops straight away cause he had touched the vehicle and that is when they turned up.”
Detective Acting Superintendent Mark White has told reporters: “It’s hard to say whether we’re looking at one person, or more persons.”
Police have warned members of the public not to approach the wanted man, but have not confirmed reports he is armed.
On Thursday morning a woman arrived at the low-set, brick Buccan property from which the suspect fled.
She told reporters she was looking for her son who lived there and didn’t know where he was, and police would not say if they knew.
Police have doorknocked residents at the Stapylton mobile home park.
A resident Chris Anthony has told of noticing the damaged ute parked strangely.
“The car was just there. I didn’t know there was a body in there,” he told the Seven network.
“The car was pretty smashed up, the glass was broken. It was pretty bad.”
Another resident Damien Smith has told the Gold Coast Bulletin the ute had “like a burnt bonnet on it or something wrong with the front end”.
“It was strange. Then all the police turn up and we’re thinking, what’s going on here? We don’t normally find dead bodies here. There’s only three or four houses here on the street.”
