Thursday, June 14, 2007
Has New Zealand Gone Completely Mad?
Normally I find New Zealand a very nice place to live. It's peaceful, mostly. It's safe, mostly.
The last two days make me wonder whether or not I've fallen through a worm hole and ended up in gangland USA or something. Yesterday, on the National Program news were the following stories:
1. An under 15 rugby match in Hamilton was abandoned with 10 minutes to play, after what some spectators described as a 'bad tempered' game boiled over to the point where on player shouted "We've got knives in our bags, and we're going to kill you!". The boy concerned has been suspended from all sports activities at the school for the remainder of 2007, and another boy from the same school has been suspended from all rugby until the end of the season.
2. Two chefs resigned from an as yet unnamed Auckland restaurant on Sunday night, apparently with a view to going to work for a rival restaurant. 3 men, employees of the first restaurant, have been arrested, and police are working towards arrests of four other employees of the restaurant, after 7 people broke into the two chef's house and kidnapped them at gunpoint. One of the chefs attempted to escape by climbing over the railing of a second story balcony, fell, and broke both his ankles. The two chefs were then taken to two different addresses in separate cars, where the one without the broken ankles escaped and raised the alarm at a nearby petrol station. See the first story here and a follow up story here.
3. A soldier, whose unit has been deployed to peace-keeping duties in East Timor, is currently in jail, awaiting a psychiatric assessment report and a sentencing hearing on July 9, at which the judge has said he will receive a considerable prison term. In mid-April the soldier had completed a training exercise, after which he became involved in a domestic incident with his partner, during which he hit her. He then called the police, asking them to come and arrest him. he left the phone off the hook, still connected with the police despatcher listening, and then proceeded to threaten a pregnant neighbour with a gun, and attack a fellow soldier with a knife. The police arrived, and the man attempted to cut his own wrists with the knife, threatened the police, the pregnant neighbour and the other soldier with a gun. Two police attempted to use pepper spray to subdue him, but missed, collided with each other and pepper sprayed each other instead. A further policeman was about to shoot the man, his statement said he had begun to squeeze the trigger, when the man's partner jumped in between the policeman and the man, causing the policemen to stop shooting. The man was subsequently persuaded to point his gun away from the police and was overpowered. In an interview immediately after the incident he told police he wanted them to shoot him because he believed he didn't deserve to live, because he had hit a woman.
Then, this morning I found this story.... http://www.stuff.co.nz/4093970a10.html which starts with:
"Road rage ends in shooting at Auckland uni
An 18-year-old man is facing a possible 10 years behind bars after allegedly using a semi-automatic rifle in a road rage shooting incident in Albany."
