Tony Ortega has been reporting about the cult of scientology for years. He will for certain provide more insider updates about this stabbing.

https://tonyortega.org/2019/01/02/one-dead-in-stabbing-at-scientologys-australian-advanced-org-16-year-old-taken-into-custody/#more-54241

UPDATE: Still very preliminary, and we want to be careful about this. But so far, based on police statements, this was a 16-year-old child of a Scientologist who had some kind of “domestic” incident yesterday, and today was on the grounds of the AO where his family member apparently worked or (more likely) was getting services. He was asked to leave the premises, and was being escorted off the grounds by two Sea Org workers when he pulled out a knife and stabbed one of them, a 24-year-old Taiwan national, in the neck, fatally. The other SO worker, 40 years old, also received some lacerations.

And yes, we have to agree with Observer: Getting an Elli Perkins vibe here.

More details when they come.

One question we haven’t seen the press bring up yet. Is it unusual for the AO to have a Taiwanese national on staff? No, not at all. Scientology is dying in Australia, and so they have had to import a lot of Taiwanese workers to keep the facilities there staffed.

What is unusual is that any activity happened at the AO at all. Scientology spent something like $40 million to turn a former national acoustics lab into its new Advanced Org that would serve Australia, New Zealand, and Asia. But even in its own planning papers it admitted that traffic at the facility would be light. And we would be surprised if at any time there were more than a couple dozen people — workers and Scientologists there to get services — on the campus at any one time.

Opening the AO in such a vast, lavish facility was purely for show, another part of David Miscavige’s attempt to convince his wealthy donors that Scientology is actually booming, when it isn’t.

None of that — the small number of people there, the presence of Taiwan nationals — may have had anything to do with today’s incident. We still are hoping to learn more about this Scientology family, what the “domestic incident” was about that happened the day before, and what the 16-year-old’s upset was about.