Victoria Police Constables Steven Tynan and Damian Eyre’s night shift started on October 11, 1988, at 11:00 pm. Call sign ‘Prahran 311′, it had been a shift of routine policing for the pair; a domestic dispute, noisy parties, a drunk in Fitzroy Street, a pub assault on Chapel Street, a smashed shop window, and two activated security alarms. At 4:39 am on the morning of October 12, two and a half hours before the end of their shift, a new job was radioed to them from the police communication centre.

“Prahran 311, if you can slip down to Walsh Street in South Yarra. Mr Ellis of 220 Walsh Street states there’s a white Holden Sedan, don’t know what the rego is, got the lights on and smashed windows in the middle of the road.”

Constables Tynan and Eyre found the white Commodore still sitting in the middle of the road out the front of 220 Walsh Street. Tynan and Eyre approached the Commodore with no sense of danger. All signs suggested it was a stolen car abandoned after a joyride. Considered a routine job, it was nothing out of the ordinary at all for a typical police shift…