Wait\u0101rere Beach address hours before arriving a second time<\/a> to find a man dead and three others with gunshot wounds in the early hours of this morning.<\/p>\nThe survivors – a 46-year-old woman and two males aged 17 and 21 – remain critically wounded in Wellington Hospital.<\/p>\n
A 60-year-old man that RNZ understands to be Benjamin Harry Timmins was found dead – while a young girl at the scene is being cared for by family.<\/p>\n
Police are not looking for anyone else.<\/p>\n
On Facebook, Timmins’ sister said he was her rock, her friend, her protector “and above all, my brother”.<\/p>\n
“I will miss him.” she said.<\/p>\n
She said it was with the “heaviest of broken hearts” that she was sharing that he was dead.<\/p>\n
“The last of the good old boys,” she wrote.<\/p>\n
“Loved friend, father, and brother. Trickster, funny fella, all round solid gold.”<\/p>\n
She added that there would be a private cremation.<\/p>\n
A 111 call was made shortly after midnight, but Inspector Ross Grantham said a first call was made by the woman at about 7pm.<\/p>\n
He said police took action then, but could not say what that was or what the call was for.<\/p>\n
Grantham said officers were at the property within eight minutes of the second call.<\/p>\n
“The quick response by police likely saved the three victims’ lives. Our officers were confronted with a harrowing scene that no one should have to witness.”<\/p>\n
The body of the dead man is still at the scene and will be removed tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Inspector Grantham said a scene examination will continue for the next few days.<\/p>\n
“Locals can expect to see a police presence in the area for the time being.<\/p>\n
“I would like to commend everyone who was involved in this harrowing ordeal, from those who called emergency services, as well as first responders at the scene.”<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police at the scene of the shooting incident. Photo: RNZ\/Mark Papalii Police were called to a Wait\u0101rere Beach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-232471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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