In his final breath, a Melbourne policeman heroically gave colleagues the information needed to find and catch his killers, a jury has been told.
Jurors will retire in the coming weeks to consider their verdicts in the murder trial of Jason Roberts, accused of killing Sergeant Gary Silk and Senior Constable Rodney Miller in 1998.
In his second day of closing arguments, prosecutor Ben Ihle QC described Sen Const Miller's dying declarations to officers who comforted him as "nothing short of heroic".
While one colleague held his head in her lap and comforted him, Sen Const Miller repeated the important information police needed.
"Silky's dead, there were two offenders, the car was a Hyundai, one of the offenders was last seen on foot," Mr Ihle said, quoting the dying officer.
"He wanted his colleagues to get them. And he told his colleagues what he thought of them when he described them as c***s."
Sen Const Miller spent his dying breaths making sure police knew what he could tell them about the offenders, Mr Ihle said.
Any suggestion Roberts' defence might make that the "two" refers to there being two police, would be ridiculous, Mr Ihle said.
Believing that suggestion would require jurors reject the evidence of multiple police who said Sen Const Miller used the plural "they" to describe the offenders, to reject that he was able to give a clear and appropriate description, to convey that Sgt Silk was already dead, and his own fear of dying.
"He was able to answer questions about how long ago the shooting occurred and, importantly, he was able to relay how many offenders they should be looking for," he said.
Roberts has pleaded guilty to 10 armed robberies committed with Bandali Debs, the father of his then-girlfriend.
But he denies he was with Debs on August 16, 1998 when the officers were gunned down after pulling over a car near the Silky Emperor restaurant in Moorabbin.
His barrister David Hallowes is expected to begin his closing address to jurors on Thursday.
