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Liam Alexander Hall looked vacant as police raided his Warwick home on January 26.
Dressed head-to-toe in a blue forensics jumpsuit, camera footage taken from the scene shows police officers milling around him and forensics vans parked up in front of the property.
The then-31-year-old runs his hands through his hair and rubs the back of his neck as police dressed in tactical response gear speak with him.
At one point, he realises he is being filmed by a nearby cameraman shooting through the trees obscuring his front yard, and stares down the barrel of the camera.
The next time reporters would see Hall was in the dock of Perth’s overnight magistrates court on January 27.
Hall lived alone at the three-bedroom, one-bathroom home in Warwick, in Perth’s north.
His two brothers and their father also live in Western Australia, while his mother lived over east, but Hall was at the house by himself.
The 31-year-old had autism, and lived in a home owned by Foundation Housing under its affordable housing program for people on low to moderate incomes.
The street he lived on is known to be part of “old” Warwick, where many of the houses were built in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Residents say it was a patchwork of households living on different incomes, and some of the houses on Hall’s street were often noticeably neglected.
Police claimed this was the home where Hall spent time perusing the internet, allegedly accessing “pro-white material” that motivated his actions on January 26.
It was also in this house, police allege, Hall started building what would later be described as a “homemade bomb”.
Little is known about Hall’s movements on January 26 itself. Footage showed him dressed in all-black on the terrace floor of the Myer building in Forrest Place, high above a crowd of Invasion Day rally protesters.
He had a mask covering the bottom half of his face on when he hurled the object, and then took off at a slow jog toward the corner of the building.
Hall was almost immediately stopped by officers, and body cam footage later released by police shows him dressed in a shirt with artwork on it by Aboriginal artist Kathleen Buzzacott. He was arrested and charged, and appeared in court the next day.
Hall was still dressed in his blue forensics suit when he sat in the dock on the morning of January 27.
He appeared in Perth’s overnight magistrates court, the first encounter with the judicial system for those arrested in the early hours of the morning.
Some people waiting to face the magistrate that day appeared to still be inebriated after Australia Day the night before, while others lost their cool over a petty theft charge from a local bottle shop.
However, Hall cut a silent figure by the time his matter was called.
He looked vacantly around the courtroom on occasion, and put his head in his hands as his public defender and WA Police spoke about a potential suppression order.
Hall was “acutely vulnerable” because of his mental health, his lawyer said, and wanted to bail him to somewhere safer than Hakea Prison.
She told the court his safety would be at risk behind bars, due to the allegation Hall had allegedly aimed to harm a “group of people” – namely, First Nations people, who comprise about 39 per cent of Hakea’s population.
Identifying Hall publicly could also impact his already fragile mental health, she said, but Hall would need to be seen by a court nurse to determine just how bad it had become.
The magistrate paused proceedings for a mental health assessment, and by the time he returned, his lawyer was convinced the 31-year-old was a “very vulnerable man”, and said she couldn’t proceed with his bail application without making sure he got the support he needed.
Instead, Hall was sent to Hakea.
He spent his 32nd birthday behind bars at the facility on February 10. With Hakea currently in the grips of what has been described as chronic understaffing and high tensions, the Department of Justice reportedly worked overtime to ensure Hall’s safety was prioritised.
It took another three weeks for Hall to come back before the court, by which time he had been charged him with Western Australia’s first-ever terrorism offence.
WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch refused to mince words about the decision to charge Hall with the offence nine days after the alleged attempted bombing.
“We will allege that it was a nationalist and racially motivated attack, and we will allege that he was targeting members of Aboriginal community, and First Nations people,” he said.
About 11 days after the announcement, Hall was visited by his lawyer in Hakea and told the news about his new charge.
His family were spoken to and offered protection by WA Police, and his lawyer said it was apparent Hall’s two brothers also struggled with their own mental health challenges, and would need to be looked after when or if his name was released.
Meanwhile, three reports have been carried on Hall’s mental state. One by a disability and accredited social worker, one from a court liaison service officer and another from the state’s forensic mental health service.
He has been given a new medication to trial, which nurses say will take about six weeks to take full effect, and was unable to appear via video link from the prison on Tuesday to watch the proceedings due to his health.
His lawyer, Simon Freitag SC, said he appreciated “a bail application would be unrealistic”, and the matter was put off until March 31.
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