NZ News
‘They seemed to be getting alright’: Community devastated as couple shot by police
The pastor of a church attended by a couple shot by police, one fatally, says the incident is “heartbreaking”.
It comes as a friend of the couple said they had issues with family violence and addiction, but “seemed to be getting alright”.
Police were called to a house in Clyde Road, Bryndwr about 11pm on Wednesday after receiving a report of a man armed with a knife threatened himself and his partner.
Officers arrived at the address a short time later and a woman ran from the house, followed by a man armed with a knife, police said in a statement.
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Canterbury District Commander Superintendent Tony Hill said officers shot the man, believing the woman to be at risk of imminent serious harm, critically injuring him.
The woman subsequently picked up the knife and threatened police, he said.
Officers appealed for her to put the weapon down, but she instead moved forward, and was fatally shot, he said.
Hill said immediate medical assistance was provided to the woman but she died shortly afterwards.
The injured man was still in a critical condition in hospital on Thursday morning.
Police on Clyde Road the day after they fatally shot a woman, and critically wounded a man in Christchurch. Photo: RNZ / Nathan Mckinnon
The couple were connected to the New Generation Church on Clyde Rd.
Senior pastor Eduardo Mendonça told RNZ the church helped the local community through various programs as well as lunches and breakfasts. The couple would regularly attend.
“We just always dealt with them as a couple. Our main goal as a church was just to serve with the basic needs, like immediate needs, and of course, with sharing our beliefs as a Christian church. That is our main involvement with them.”
He said the community was devastated at the news.
“Our hearts are broken to know that people so close to us in that community went through this,” he said.
“We are devastated. It’s heartbreaking to know the people that we’ve been serving and talking and in a sense, you know, just getting to know slowly, you know, within their own lives, they were going through such pressure and difficulties that that led them to this … this is heartbreaking.”
A friend of the couple, Nate Light, was laying flowers in Clyde Road for his friends this morning.
Nate Light, friend of man critically shot by police in Christchurch. Photo: RNZ / Nathan Mckinnon
Light said the couple had issues with family violence and addiction.
“They had been having their troubles over the past few days. They seemed to be getting all right because we had spoken to them. They seemed to be getting alright,” he said, tearfully.
The man was in a “bit of weird headspace”, Light said.
“I’d like to say that I could have come down with my partner last night and told [the man] to come chill at home with the dogs. But that’s me putting it on myself like it’s not my fault, you know. It’s just there’s things I could have done. I could have done this, I could have done this, and could have done that, but, f…, there’s nothing you can do really at the end of the day.”
A nearby resident told RNZ the couple were “always fighting” and said police were routinely called to the address.
The neighbour, who asked not to be named, said they had lived at the address for about six years.
Flowers left by friend of critically shot man in Christchurch. Photo: RNZ / Nathan Mckinnon
“They were very unhappy. She was a very unhappy person. They fought a lot.
“She was always calling the police.
For a while the police would be called “every few months,” she said.
About a year ago the woman who lived at the address told her neighbour the couple were going through anger management. Since then, things appeared to be quieter she said.
“I thought maybe they had sorted things out.”
Last night the resident heard a loud bang and then later saw police.
“I was surprised that it happened because they’d been quiet for a long while.”
Scene guards were in place at the Clyde Road property, and residents could expect to see a continued police presence in the coming days and part of the road would be closed.
Photo: RNZ / Nathan Mckinnon
“We have spoken to next of kin, and our thoughts are with the family of those involved at this incredibly difficult time,” Hill said.
Kāinga Ora has confirmed to RNZ the fatal shooting was at one of its properties.
It said its thoughts were with all those affected.
Kāinga Ora’s regional director, Liz Krause, said it will be reaching out to nearby tenants to see if they need more support over the coming days.
A investigation was under way and the shooting would also be referred to the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) as is standard, police said.
Source: RNZ
Latest News
Opportunities to mitigate multi-million-dollar RNZ budget blowout likely missed – experts
Multiple opportunities to identify and mitigate a multi-million-dollar budget blowout at RNZ appear have been missed, according to the former executive director at Audit New Zealand.
The public broadcaster on Monday revealed a near $12 million shock financial loss after a litany of financial blunders, which will now lead to sweeping job cuts.
The $11.8m loss is more than 25 times the $470,000 RNZ had expected to lose over the year to June.
CEO Paul Thompson took responsibility for the result, and said internal reports gave an inaccurate picture of the finances, meaning the scale of the loss only became clear in October.
RNZ’s former chief financial officer Hilary Parker resigned unexpectedly in early October.
The board said it would commission an independent review into what went wrong.
Independent contractor Stephen Walker, who left the Audit Office earlier this year, said the size of the loss was surprising, as was the length of time it took to identify it – months after the financial year ended.
Supplied / OAG
“Probably more of a concern is that they had seemingly been unaware that they were running up a significant deficit until they were in the preparation stage of their annual report in October.”
Walker said public entities typically produced monthly financial reports.
An interim audit also took place before the end of the financial year, he said, but if the organisation hadn’t identified significant losses at that stage, the auditor could also be in the dark.
“It seems that there’s a real weakness in forecasting and budgeting that’s occurred here and that the monthly accounts, when they’re produced, either haven’t identified these significant variances against budget or the magnitude of them really hasn’t come to light until right towards the end of the financial year,” Walker said.
“And really at that point, there’s no opportunity for the chief executive, the leadership team to take, and the board to take, any corrective action because the year has effectively been completed.”
Walker said the “significant miss” was difficult to account for given it was more than 10 percent of RNZ’s total funding.
He said based on RNZ’s annual report, financial complexity didn’t appear to be a factor.
“This $11.8m loss isn’t made up of one particular item … it seems to have been contributed to by a number of separate expense lines running over budget. So I don’t think it’s necessarily to do with complexity.”
Among the errors, RNZ wrongly counted $2m from land sales as income in its budget. Staff costs also came in $3.2m over budget, including $1.4m in redundancy payments.
Professor at Auckland University’s business school Norman Wong said based on media reports the issues identified were “significant and troubling”.
Supplied / University of Auckland
“But recognising the sale of land as income in their budget is a basic error that one would have expected to have been caught and corrected well before it got to this point.”
With funding reductions at RNZ over the past two years, Walker expected greater scrutiny of financial results.
“Virtually every public entity has had their annual budget reduced. And so you would expect … the leadership team on a monthly basis and board – I’m not sure how frequently the board will consider the information – but you would expect them to be interrogating the results on a regular basis throughout the year,” he said.
Walker said initiating an independent review was the correct course of action and that he’d want to understand what information the leadership team and the board were regularly receiving.
He said he’d “love to say” surprising financial results were rare, but conceded they occured on a semi-frequent basis during his time leading the Audit Office.
“The benefit of independent scrutiny by the Audit Office – and the auditors providing that support to the Auditor General – [is] that the reporting is fairly presented at the end of the year, whether it’s good, bad or ugly.”
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