An Australian man who made international headlines after being arrested during a late-night rampage through a cafe in Vietnam has been identified as a young entrepreneur from Western Australia.
Shaymus Lilly, a Mandurah man based in Hoi An, was captured on CCTV as he tore through a cafe in Da Nang on May 30, sending staff and patrons scrambling.
Mr Lilly, 34, runs a brand strategy company called Shaped and was active on social media in the lead up to the incident, posting “I need help” about midnight on May 30.
“I am of sound mind,” he wrote. “I will not resist authorities. I want to go back to Australia.”
Live videos posted to his Facebook less than two hours before the incident appeared to show Mr Lilly shirtless and acting erratically in another venue. A police officer can be seen attending the venue, with Mr Lilly heard to yell “help, spare my life” and telling the officer to keep clear of his personal space.
“Look my name up on the web, Shaymus Lilly,” he can be heard to say. “Shaymus Lilly needs help. They’re not police, they’re mafia.”
In another video that appeared to have been recorded in the same venue, a man could be heard off-camera challenging a person to a fight, claiming they were part of the “Ukrainian mafia”. The man filming the second 18-minute video, whom Mr Lilly earlier gave his phone to, can be heard to say it was about 11pm local time.
A woman understood to be Mr Lilly’s mother commented on one video to say “working on getting you home, Shay. Be kind peeps...”
The live streams came hours after he wrote in another post, tagged in Hoi An: “My advice, everyone who is feeling unsafe, stay away from old town tonight. Spread the word”.
His social media activity suggests Mr Lilly planned to spend at least three months in Hoi An from April, when he inquired online about finding a “digital nomad friendly” rental. In a post in the Expats in Da Nang page on May 29, he claimed to have been assaulted by a cab driver in April and shared pictures of him with black eyes and a bandaged arm.
On the morning of May 30 he posted in the Expats in Da Nang page offering an invitation to “join a live video chat across my socials”. “The people of Hoi An are beautiful. The Vietnamese are beautiful. The expat community is beautiful. I mean that,” he wrote. “But beneath the surface, there’s an undercurrent – crime, drugs, and people pretending to be something they’re not. I won’t name anyone. That’s not my role. What I will say is this: trust your own judgment, and pay attention.”
His posts have drawn a flood of comments from locals in Vietnam responding to last week’s incident at Ge Cafe, during which he is alleged to have caused about $27,000 worth of damage.
Owners recounted the incident on the cafe’s Facebook page, sharing CCTV of the rampage, which they said occurred after Mr Lilly arrived around 11:45pm on May 29, local time. They wrote that the man sat down at a table and was approached by staff to tell him he had to order at the counter. Another customer then offered him their phone to translate the conversation, and he allegedly refused to return it, and “only laughed and continued scrolling through messages”.
“However, before the staff could reach the security guard, the man stood up, began taking off his shirt, smashing a customer’s phone, and telling everyone they had 10 seconds to leave the store,” the owners claimed. “He then proceeded to vandalise the place, destroying much of the bar equipment, decor, tempered glass doors, and many customer belongings inside at the time, such as laptops and phones. The staff called security for assistance due to unusual behaviour. Many customers on the second and third floors were trapped. About 5 minutes after the incident, the police arrived in front of the store. At this point, the suspect tried to escape and ran to the second floor. After about 2-3 minutes, the suspect was surrounded by police and taken to the police station at approximately 00:30 on May 30, 2026. The suspect was uncooperative.”
The owners shared pictures of smashed windows, a laptop, lamps and the wreckage of its coffee machine which was pushed off a bench by the man. Footage showed him mowing down equipment with the chair, destroying the coffee machine, coffee grinder and cups. He used a chair to break through the cafe’s large glass windows before grabbing an Apple laptop from a table, breaking it over his knee and throwing it outside through the broken glass. Mr Lilly was also captured on CCTV appearing to put one cafe goer in a headlock as he grappled with patrons over a chair.
Police were shown marching a handcuffed Mr Lilly, wearing only his underwear, out of the venue and into a marked vehicle. Ge Cafe posted overnight on Wednesday that it would reopen after being closed for several days. “Ge would like to thank all the offers of support that everyone has sent,” the owners wrote. “However, we ask not to receive any financial or material support. Just need people to visit and continue to accompany Ge, that’s enough.”
Local media reported on Saturday that Mr Lilly had been detained for questioning, and it was not yet clear whether he had since been released. A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on Wednesday said it was “providing consular assistance to the family of an Australian detained in Vietnam”. “Owing to our privacy obligations we are unable to provide further comment,” they said.
