A person is in critical care after being lured to an Invercargill park on a dating app and attacked last week. <\/p>\n
Friday’s assault, followed by a similar one on Sunday, has prompted police to issue a warning, urging dating app users to “protect themselves” when meeting with people they’ve spoken to online. <\/p>\n
Inspector Mel Robertson said the first attack occurred late at night on Friday, May 8. A person was in critical care following the assault. The attack on Sunday, May 10, left one person seriously injured. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn both incidents reported to police, it appears people are using these apps to lure people to secluded locations late at night with the intention to attack them,” Robertson said. <\/p>\n
\u201cBoth these reported incidents occurred in the Queens Park area.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robertson said police were investigating both incidents and working to identify and locate the alleged offenders. <\/p>\n
Investigators wanted to hear from anyone who had information about the assaults, as well as anyone in the Queens Park area between 6pm and 4am from Friday, 8 May to Sunday, 10 May.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese alleged offenders are engaging with people on these apps with the intention of meeting them in quiet areas at nighttime to attack them,” Robertson said. <\/p>\n
\u201cNot only are they taking advantage of people\u2019s trust, but they are planning these attacks with the intention to seriously injure these people.”<\/p>\n
She urged anyone planning to meet with someone they met on a dating app to choose a well-lit, public location. Robertson said people should let someone “trusted” know about their plans and movements. <\/p>\n
Those with information on the attacks were asked to contact police via 105. <\/p>\n
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including Trump says the Iran ceasefire is on life support, and why Emmanuel Macron\u2019s told off a crowd. (Source: Breakfast)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A person is in critical care after being lured to an Invercargill park on a dating app and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67,42,43,15488,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-423244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-southland","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423244","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=423244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}