Fire investigators and a police forensics team are examining a home in Whang\u0101rei where a man died in a suspicious house fire overnight.<\/p>\n
The house, on Thomas Street in Tikipunga, was cordoned off and under police guard on Monday morning.<\/p>\n
A car was destroyed and a house damaged in the early morning blaze, reported at 3.09am.<\/p>\n
Firefighters from Whang\u0101rei and Kamo extinguished the flames and located a man inside the house. He died at the scene.<\/p>\n
At 4.55am, just over two hours later, firefighters were called to another car fire, just a couple of blocks away near the corner of Vinegar Hill Road and Harrison Drive. That vehicle had been parked on the roadside in a new subdivision.<\/p>\n
Fire investigators at the scene told RNZ they had confirmed the second car fire had been deliberately lit.<\/p>\n
The earlier house fire was also being treated as suspicious, the investigation still in its early stages.<\/p>\n
A specialist police forensic team was examining the house before it would be turned over to investigators Fire and Emergency NZ.<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear if the fire had spread from the car to the house or vice versa.<\/p>\n
The K\u0101inga Ora home was still standing but damaged on one side, and fire had spread throughout the interior.<\/p>\n
Detective Inspector Al Symonds said the male occupant suffered critical injuries, and died despite the efforts of first responders.<\/p>\n
He said Tikipunga residents could expect to see an increased police presence on Monday.<\/p>\n
Police had already spoken to witnesses in the area at the time of the incident.<\/p>\n
“A scene guard has been in place this morning while a scene examination was commenced, and this will remain in place today as our enquiries continue,” Symonds said.<\/p>\n
A post-mortem examination and formal identification of the victim would be completed in the coming days. Until then police could not release further details about the deceased, he said.<\/p>\n
Symonds urged anyone who was in the area at the time, or had information about the fires, to contact police as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
VIA RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fire investigators and a police forensics team are examining a home in Whang\u0101rei where a man died in a suspicious house fire overnight. The house, on Thomas Street in Tikipunga, was cordoned off and under police guard on Monday morning. A car was destroyed and a house damaged in the early morning blaze, reported at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,208,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-lifestyle","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9657","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=9657"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9659,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9657\/revisions\/9659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}