NZ News
Four teens charged after burglary and high-speed chase in Auckland
Four teenagers have been charged over an Auckland home invasion that resulted in a high-speed chase across the city, ending on Karangahape Road with a forced stop.
The accused – aged between 15 and 17 – are due to appear in the Manukau Youth Court on Wednesday.
They face charges of aggravated burglary and the driver has been charged with assaulting a person with a blunt instrument and failing to stop.
It started with an alleged armed home invasion in the sleepy eastern suburb of Howick and ended with police forcing a stolen ute to stop on Auckland’s Karangahape Road.
Manukau area commander Shanan Gray said four people, one armed with a machete, carried out the home invasion in Howick before stealing a white Ford ute and heading south, shortly after 3pm on Tuesday.
The superintendent said the ute reached high speeds and drove dangerously, sometimes on the wrong side of the road, as the four people made their way through Manukau and Ōtara.
Police inspect a Ford ute at the scene. Photo: RNZ / Kim Baker Wilson
The police helicopter watched from above and Gray said at times, the ute crashed into cars and rammed patrol cars as they headed into the city.
Members of the police armed offenders squad (AOS) joined in the chase and a sponge round was fired.
Gray said a police dog was also used in the arrest.
The drama unfolded in the afternoon as commuters began making their way home from work.
A shopkeeper who only wanted to be known as Dave said the ute was heading into oncoming traffic when it was stopped.
“It was like full speed, boom. And the cop’s car … it just hit from the side. At that moment one guy jumped from the car with his hands up.”
A crashed car at the scene. Photo: Kim Baker Wilson/RNZ
A bridal shop worker, Jessie, was talking with a client when she heard two collisions outside on the street and what sounded like an explosion and a gun shot.
“I saw this white ute that had seemingly been the one that had crashed earlier, a bunch of men all kind of piled out of the car and all kind of got down on their stomachs…
“It had clearly been a police chase that had been going on for a while, because there were lots of police cars and police on them right away, and police dogs as well,” she said.
The worker said she was pretty shaken and locked the doors to their shop.
“We’re definitely kind of accustomed to some craziness happening outside on K’Road, so we’re definitely quick to lock our doors on occasions to keep our team and customers safe.
“But yeah, definitely nothing like this has ever happened before.”
Two other vehicles were involved in the crash.
Photo: Kim Baker Wilson/RNZ
She said one of the vehicles that the white ute crashed into looked like it had a young couple in, but she said they looked unhurt.
“It is extremely lucky that the reckless behaviour of these individuals did not result an anyone suffering serious injuries.”
Gray said two of the accused needed hospital treatment following the events.
“The victim of the aggravated burglary in Howick was shaken by the violent event that took place and has been provided support.”
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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