Footage shows fugitive Dezi Freeman bolting from three female officers who tried to arrest him for refusing to wear a mask during the Covid pandemic.
After leaping a fence in the Victorian town of Benalla, sprinting across a road and plunging down an embankment by a waterway, Freeman manages to outrun the officers, who eventually abandon the chase.
The dramatic escape is believed to have occurred in mid-2021 - more than four years before Freeman allegedly gunned down two police officers and wounded a third during a warrant at his Porepunkah property on August 26, 2025.
The Benalla incident followed a heated exchange with a female sergeant over state Covid rules, which required anyone claiming a mask exemption on health, religious or cultural grounds to provide their name and address.
Freeman had travelled 100km from his Porepunkah home to Benalla, where he joined fellow mask objectors at a picnic table in the botanical gardens before confronting the local police chief about the laws.
As Sergeant Walker explained the rules, Freeman launched into a tirade, quoting statutes and accusing officers of 'abusing the law' while sneering that they had 'the intelligence of kindergarten children.'
He tells two officers who are wearing masks that he didn't want to hear 'antagonistic ... adversarial' responses from them.
Freeman claimed no law required him to wear a mask, and said the 'hierarchy of law' between state and federal governments was confused.
A police sergeant is unimpressed with Dezi Freeman's arguments about why he shouldn't bow to the laws about mask wearing during Covid, while he tries to lecture her about his knowledge of the statutes
Finally, she has had enough and tells her fellow officers to arrest him and Dezi takes off, fleeing across the grass with the three woman officers in pursuit
'There's so many reasons why these, these mask directions often don't apply, all right, because people are protected by higher laws,' he said.
'And those higher laws overrule those other laws. Are you aware of these? Do they teach you this at the police academy?'
'This is the trouble, you guys are given guns, tasers, all this gear, no offence, but like, the intelligence of a kindergarten child without the proper training. I don't mean that offensively.'
After repeatedly asking for Freeman's full name and address, the sergeant begins to lose patience and says, 'I can arrest you'.
Freeman replies: 'I'm quite happy to provide my name and address, and I have every intention of doing so once you have followed the correct legal process that you are required to follow under law. Now right now you are in breach of section 166 of the public health.'
Sergeant Walker interjects: 'I am following legal process. I am acting on behalf of the chief officer as a member of Victoria Police'.
There are a couple more exchanges with Freeman speaking over the sergeant, who asks him twice more to provide his name and address, before she has had enough.
Freeman sprints towards a road with the cops chasing him, but he then takes off down a ban on the other side where the officers give up and let him escape
Despite a police pursuit and the offer from some kids to tackle him, Dezi Freeman gets away from the attempt to arrest him for non-compliance over mask mandates in mid-2021
A Bearcat police vehicle near the Buckland River in Porepunkah on Thursday, day ten of the manhunt for Dezi Freeman after he allegedly shot dead two cops on August 26
She said: 'You are under arrest. Four five six, you are under arrest,' and with that, Dezi is off, dashing across the grass towards a road, one of the female officers trying to grab him but failing to lay a surgical glove on him.
With one of his cohorts, Bruce, panting to keep up with the chase, Freeman darts through traffic, down the bank towards a waterway and past people walking their dog or riding bikes.
The three women cops finally give up and return to Dezi's park bench, where one of his fellow protestors has a megaphone.
'I didn't think he was going to do that,' the man says and then returns to broadcasting to the public about the Victorian Government's Covid laws
A woman turns up and reveals a group of kids had offered to the female cops that they catch Dezi.
'These young d*ckheads wanting to get involved and tackle him,' she said, to which a fellow protestor replied, f***ing brainwashed d*ckheads.'
A manhunt for Freeman, 56, has been underway for ten days in Victoria's Mount Buffalo National Park, with police fearing that sympathetic locals could harbouring him.
