Accused cop killer on the loose in blizzard conditions

An armed fugitive’s survival skills will be pushed to the limit amid severe weather warnings for blizzard conditions and a “dangerous mix” of rain, hail, thunderstorms and damaging winds.

Dezi Freeman is on the run for a fifth day after killing two police officers in Victoria’s Porepunkah in the High Country.

The manhunt will resume on Saturday as 450 police officers scour the wilderness, hampered by 115kmh winds and a bitterly cold blizzard.

Tough conditions have impacted search efforts with thunderstorms, lashings of rain and hail battering the rural town.

Temperatures were predicted to plunge as low as 5 degrees in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Damaging winds, blizzard-like conditions and snow were predicted down to levels of just 700 metres.

The rain is set to ease by daybreak and officers will resume scouring mines, caves and dugouts in and around the small rural town.

Freeman, 56, has been on the run since Tuesday when he fled into bushland following a fatal confrontation at a property in Porepunkah, about 300 kilometres northeast of Melbourne.

He is accused of killing Detective Leading Senior Constable Neal Thompson, 59, and Senior Constable Vadim De Waart, 35.

Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush said more than 450 police officers have been deployed to Porepunkah as part of the search.

Freeman’s 42-year-old wife Mali and 15-year-old son were arrested on Thursday night following an operation at an address in Chandler Court near the town’s centre, before they were interviewed and released.

“There may or may not be charges that follow,” Bush said.

Police helicopters and drones have been circling the area for days in the hope of catching a sign of the fugitive’s whereabouts.

Weatherzone said a pool of Antarctic air would spread over the country’s southeast into the weekend, causing temperatures to drop and snow to fall in Victoria, Tasmania, NSW the ACT and possibly South Australia.

Snow could fall to about 300 metres elevation in Tasmania, 600 metres in Victoria, 700 metres in southern NSW and the ACT and 900 metres in central NSW, most likely between Friday night and Saturday afternoon as the coldest air moves through.

“In addition to the widespread low-level snow, this system will also cause a dangerous mix of rain, hail, thunderstorms and damaging winds across several states in southern and southeastern Australia on Friday and Saturday,” warned Weatherzone.

“This blast of icy and windy weather, which is occurring in the final week of Australia’s winter, will cause dangerous conditions over a broad area of southern and southeastern Australia over the next couple of days.”

Concerned friend Marlie Thomas said Freeman had become more withdrawn in the days before the fatal shootings.

She attends the local Our Lady of Snows Catholic church – alongside Freeman and his wife — which will remain closed this weekend.

“We knew he was withdrawing a little bit,” she told AAP.

“We said, ‘we’ve got to keep a closer eye on him’.”

Freeman, who has bush survival experience, was last seen wearing dark green tracksuit pants, a dark green rain jacket, brown Blundstone boots and reading glasses, police said.

He is believed to be a sovereign citizen, an ideology that rejects government authority and whose followers believe the rule of law doesn’t apply to them, and who disassociate from society.

-with AAP