Australian media have named the man arrested in connection with an attack on MP Helen Haines and have shown an image of the suspect in a police vehicle surrounded by officers.
Australia's ABC News said Brendan Nugent was detained following Monday's incident, in which a Toyota Land Cruiser hit Haines outside her electorate office in Wangaratta, northeast Victoria.
Victoria police have not confirmed the suspect's name, saying only that a 43-year-old man is in custody.
ABC News said it had identified Nugent, whose family members said they had been friends with Haines for over 20 years.
Haines, an independent member of Parliament, is in a critical condition at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. She has lost one leg, and doctors are trying to save the other, according to reports.
Nugent is set to appear at Wangaratta Magistrates' Court on Wednesday.
Newsweek has contacted Victoria Police for further comment.
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What Do We Know About the Suspect?
ABC News and other outlets have identified Nugent as the suspect arrested following the attack on Haines, who has been the MP for Indi since 2019.
A police operation is ongoing at a property where Nugent is understood to live in Tarrawingee, about 8 miles from Wangaratta, a rural town of 30,000 residents about three hours northeast of Melbourne.
Media reported that Nugent was a forestry campaigner in the state's northeast who worked with environmental campaigners.
Nugent obtained a master's degree in forest ecosystems science from the University of Melbourne and spent years researching the forestry industry in Victoria.
He was also a committee member for the anti-logging group Save Our Strathbogie Forest until about six years ago, Guardian Australia reported.
The group's chair, Bertram Lobert, told the newspaper that Nugent was "a reasonable and thoughtful person but then he drifted away."
"This is quite personal as a lot of people in our group knew Helen personally," Lobert added.
Nugent lost contact with the forestry campaigners around 2020. He had previously made regular social media posts about the environment and politics, and a post on his X account dated April 12, 2018, shows the same vehicle police said had struck Haines.
Haines and Nugent followed each other on social media. In a post on October 28, 2019, he replied to Haines directly and described her as a "politician who takes climate change seriously."
He also made four other replies mentioning Haines on X, most recently in 2021. None of the posts showed any criticism of the independent MP.
He previously made social media replies to state and federal politicians about logging and environmental issues.
Counterterrorism expert Joshua Roose told ABC News that the suspect had "descended from more mainstream environmental concerns and become more conspiratorial."
Records online show Nugent attended Wangaratta High School, where he played in the school's state-championship-winning intermediate boys Australian rules football team in 1998.
The suspect's father, Rod Nugent, and his father's partner, Christine Cunningham, said in a statement that they had been friends with Haines for more than 20 years. They described the incident as "unfathomable."
"We would like to sincerely thank members of the local community and police who came to Helen's aid yesterday after the shocking and horrific crime," they said, adding, "All of our love and all of our thoughts are with Helen and her family and friends."
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Ben Kelly and Shakeema Edwards.