Gunman will strike again, warns escaped tourist

British tourist Joanne Lees, who managed to escape from a gunman suspected of murdering her boyfriend on a remote Australian desert highway says she fears the attacker will strike again.

Miss Lees, 27, said: ‘‘He really needs to be captured. I do not think he would hesitate to do it again.’’

Late Saturday, Miss Lees and her boyfriend Peter Falconio, 28, of Hepworth, near Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, stopped their camper van after another motorist signalled them.

The man told Mr Falconio he saw sparks coming from the van’s exhaust.

When Mr Falconio went to investigate, Miss Lees heard a gunshot. She never saw her boyfriend again, she told police. Detectives found Mr Falconio’s blood at the scene and believe he was killed.

The gunman then dragged Miss Lees from her vehicle, bound and gagged her and dumped her in the back of his pickup truck at Barrow Creek, about 190 miles north of Alice Springs.

Miss Lees managed to scramble out of the truck and, under the cover of darkness, hid in desert scrub for several hours as the gunman searched for her with a flashlight and his dog.

Her ordeal ended when she flagged down a passing truck.

‘‘I honestly don’t believe this man would have let me go,’’ she said.

‘‘Everyone can use their imagination about what it was like for me that night. But I was determined to escape, and I feel very lucky to be alive,’’ she added.

Detectives were planning to take Miss Lees back to the crime scene today and ask her to re-enact her abduction and escape.

They also continued to man roadblocks in the area despite admitting the man may have driven his four-wheel drive truck into the desert, making him virtually impossible to track.

‘‘What we’re doing is reviewing what we’ve done up there and we’re hoping to have Joanne Lees up there to do a re-enactment, to walk through what transpired to see if we’ve missed anything or if there’s anything further she can tell us in relation to what happened that night,’’ Northern Territory Police Commander Max Pope said.

Mr Falconio’s father and brother are now in Australia and were flying to Alice Springs to be close to the police hunt.

Scores of police, assisted by Aborigine trackers, continued to scour the desert around Alice Springs searching for traces of the gunman or Mr Falconio.