Wellington police have filed five murder charges in relation to the fatal fire at Loafers Lodge in Newtown.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Acting Wellington District Commander Inspector Dion Bennett said a 48-year-old man who had already been remanded in custody on two counts of arson was now also facing the additional charges.<\/p>\n
The victims’ families had been advised and police were continuing to ensure they were supported through this process, he said.<\/p>\n
Police are handing the scene at Loafers Lodge over to Fire and Emergency NZ on Thursday, he said.<\/p>\n
Once FENZ have completed their work, the site will then be handed to Wellington City Council and the building owner.<\/p>\n
Bennett thanked FENZ and the council for their cooperation and assistance during the investigation, as well as local residents and businesses who had been impacted since the fire occurred.<\/p>\n
A dawn karakia would take place on Friday for the staff involved in this operation, he said.<\/p>\n
“Once the building is returned to the owner, we understand they plan to facilitate any return of personal property from the building in cases where rooms and\/or items have not been destroyed or contaminated by fire.”<\/p>\n
There was no current timeline for this, and would require the owner to do their own due diligence in terms of safety, he said.<\/p>\n
Source RNZ<\/p>\n
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Wellington police have filed five murder charges in relation to the fatal fire at Loafers Lodge in Newtown. In a statement, Acting Wellington District Commander Inspector Dion Bennett said a 48-year-old man who had already been remanded in custody on two counts of arson was now also facing the additional charges. The victims’ families had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5151,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5149\/revisions\/5151"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}