A man wanted for allegedly throwing scalding coffee on a baby in an unprovoked attack at a park in the northern Australian state of Queensland is now the subject of an international manhunt.
Queensland Police Detective Inspector Paul Dalton said Monday that officers were working with international partners to find the man, identified as a 33-year-old foreign national, who is known to have fled the country four days after the alleged attack.
A nine-month-old boy, known only as Luka, suffered serious burns on his face, arms and legs when the man allegedly threw the piping hot drink on him as he sat with his mother on the grass at Hanlon Park in Brisbane on August 27.
Closed circuit television video released by police shows the man running from the scene, wearing a blue plaid shirt, black hat and glasses.
Dalton said early investigations were delayed by false information about the man’s name and the suspect’s own surveillance of the police operation.
“It soon became apparent to us that this person was aware of police methodologies, was certainly conducting counter surveillance activities, which made the investigation quite complex,” Dalton told reporters.
After the attack, the man took a cab to Brisbane’s city center, then drove by car across the state border to New South Wales before flying from Sydney Airport on August 31.
“It wasn’t until the first of September that we were able to put a name to the face in the CCTV,” said Dalton, who declined to name the man or his destination for fear of hampering the investigation.
Dalton said police had identified the man shortly after he fled, telling reporters: “I was in the investigation center when we put a name to the face, and it was a very happy room, only for us to do a check in 15 minutes and find out we lost him.”
Dalton described the man as an “itinerant worker” who had come and gone from Australia on various visas since 2019 and had last entered the country in January 2022.
Police have been unable to determine the man’s motive.
“I’m continually scratching my head. We can’t find a motive,” Dalton said. “A rational, normal person, you would think, wouldn’t do something like that. But that’s not always the case.”
The boy’s mother, who can’t be identified for legal reasons, told local media at the time it was “all very quick and chaotic.”
“I didn’t really understand what had happened at the time, but I just started screaming for help and yelling out that it was hot and that my son was burnt,” said the mother.
Onlookers rushed over with water to douse the child before he was taken to hospital, where he has since reportedly undergone multiple surgeries for severe burns to his chin, neck, chest and back.
At the time, police released CCTV video of the man with a request for people who recognized him to come forward.
“The footage is quite clear. I’m very confident that if you’re looking at that footage and you know that person in there, you’re going to know who it is,” Dalton told media on August 28.
The investigation took police to New South Wales and Victoria, where the man had lived at several addresses on various work and holiday visas.
Police said they’d spoken to his colleagues about his movements.