(Age) On a Friday night in 2018, as Melbourne reeled from the terror attack hours earlier in Bourke Street, Ertunc Eriklioglu excitedly told his brother and their friend about what he had seen and read in the news.
“That’s amazing,” Eriklioglu said of Hassan Khalif Shire Ali’s actions in setting his ute alight and then stabbing three men before he was fatally shot by police. Much-loved restaurateur Sisto Malaspina, one of the men stabbed, died.
“Let’s do something, yeah? Let’s do something,” Eriklioglu said to younger brother Samed and their friend, Hanifi Halis, in the garage of Ertunc’s Dallas home.
From that night and for the following 10 days the trio began planning and preparing to conduct their own terror attack on Melbourne, based on buying a .22 semi-automatic assault rifle with an intention to shoot and kill as many people as possible.
