A well-known Sydney dentist and health author was shot dead by police in the inner Sydney suburb of Potts Point on Tuesday morning, after allegedly assaulting two women at a residential apartment complex and then turning on responding officers with a knife.
Dr Steven Lin, author of the internationally published book The Dental Diet and a TEDx speaker with a substantial public profile in functional dentistry, was identified as the man killed in the incident on St Neot Avenue, Potts Point, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald. Officers from Kings Cross Police Area Command were called to the unit complex at around 10.50am on Tuesday 3 March 2026, following reports that an armed man had entered the building and assaulted two women.
Police deployed a Taser against the man, but it was ineffective. The alleged attacker then confronted officers before one discharged a single shot, hitting the man. Lin was subsequently pronounced dead at the scene. Officers used sheets to cover the deceased, who was believed to be aged in his late 30s to early 40s.
NSW Police told media that officers were "confronted by something very violent" during the encounter. A senior police spokesman acknowledged the gravity of the situation for the responding officers, noting that police "don't come to work to be confronted by this type of thing or take a life — that's the last thing we want to do."
Dr Lin was a board-accredited dentist, TEDx speaker, and international Amazon bestselling author who had built a profile as a passionate health educator working to prevent dental disease. He was based in Sydney. His book, The Dental Diet, argued for an approach to oral health grounded in nutrition science and the connection between gut health and the mouth.
The shooting will now face an extended period of institutional scrutiny. The investigation is subject to independent review by the Professional Standards Command and is being overseen by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission. A critical incident is defined as an incident involving a NSW police officer that results in the death or serious injury of a person, and monitoring is designed to ensure the police investigation is competent, thorough, and objective, providing some comfort to the family and to the public.
Where a person has died, the critical incident investigation will be finalised only after any coronial and criminal proceedings have concluded, with the LECC monitoring the process in real time. Such investigations can take two to three years to finalise. Civil libertarians and legal advocates have long argued that independent oversight of police shootings should be robust and transparent. On that point, there is genuine bipartisan consensus: no reasonable observer wants a system where the accountability mechanism exists only on paper.
For now, the circumstances surrounding what brought a respected health professional to a violent confrontation with police in a Potts Point apartment block remain unclear. A coronial process will eventually attempt to answer those questions. What Tuesday's events show, once again, is that police officers responding to domestic disturbance calls face some of the most volatile and unpredictable situations in law enforcement, often with seconds to make consequential decisions and limited tools that do not always work as intended.