Five-and-a-half hours before horror unfolded on Bourke Street, the man accused of driving the car that fatally ploughed into pedestrians appeared on television.
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Channel Nine reporter Neary Ty was on Raleigh Street in Windsor to report on a stabbing that left a man in a critical condition.
As she spoke live to the Today show at 8.04am, a maroon Holden Commodore pulled up behind her. The driver wound down the window and gestured out, waving his hat and looking at the camera.
The program quickly cut to other footage as the journalist kept speaking. Around 30 seconds later, as she returned to the screen, the car was gone.
At the time, the encounter seemed innocuous. Then, at around 2pm, Ms Ty got a call from her cameraman Glenn.
"Have you seen this situation that's unfolding in the city?" he asked. "I think it's the same car."
An identical maroon Commodore had appeared in Melbourne's CBD at 1.45pm, and was captured on video doing burnouts on the intersection of Swanston and Flinders Street.
Police allege that Dimitrious "James" Gargasoulas, 26, known as Jimmy, was behind the wheel of the car as it drove down Swanston Street, turned left into Bourke Street and began to drive into pedestrians.
Four people were killed - including a man and woman in their thirties, and a child whose age has not been released. In total, 31 people were hospitalised, with 6 in a critical condition on Friday night.
Speaking to Nine News on Friday afternoon, Ms Ty said she did not see the Commodore when it pulled up behind her several hours earlier, but she did hear shouting.
"The man started ranting and raving and swearing," she said. "He was waving his red hat out of the window.
"Now at this point I was live on air so I couldn't see what was going on, but my cameraman ... actually told me that he put his finger to his mouth to gesture to be quiet because we were on air, and that's when this man fled the scene, fish-tailing in the rain and nearly taking out a number of cars."
Ms Ty said the car returned and parked on the side of the road when she was packing up to leave.
"He was parked on the side of the road, which we thought was a bit strange that he was there." she said. "We had no idea who he was. I walked past him, and I noticed he was wearing a gold chunky bracelet.
"He was there for a while. He didn't seem erratic while he was sitting in the seat. He, remarkably, was there around 10 minutes after police and the SES had just left the scene."
Ms Ty had a lengthy look at the car and noticed a piece of green tape underneath the number plate.
Hours later, as she watched "horrifying amateur vision" of the car speeding through the CBD, she saw the same piece of tape.
"That's when we realised that was the same man," she said. "Certainly very shocking, very sad to hear that this man's been involved in this awful tragedy in Bourke Street Mall."
