Two teenagers have been charged over serious assaults in an Invercargill park where the victims were lured using dating apps.<\/p>\n
The late night assaults in the city’s Queens Park earlier this month left one victim in critical care and the other in a serious condition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A 15-year-old male has been charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, and a 17-year-old male has been charged with aggravated robbery causing grievous bodily harm.<\/p>\n
Both appeared in the Invercargill Youth Court today.<\/p>\n
These arrests relate specifically to the Queens Park assaults,\u00a0Acting Inspector Mel Robertson said.<\/p>\n
The arrests follow four youths already being charged for related crimes.<\/p>\n
The four youths are accused of using a gay dating app to target a victim whose Invercargill home they allegedly then tried to force their way into.<\/p>\n
The male teens, aged 15 and 16, appeared in Invercargill\u2019s Youth Court before Judge Russell Walker on Friday, each charged with burglary with a weapon.<\/p>\n
“Across all incidents identified, police have observed a consistent and highly concerning pattern of behaviour, where victims have been deliberately lured using dating applications and then violently assaulted.<\/p>\n
“This reinforces the serious, deliberate nature of this offending,”\u00a0Acting Inspector Robertson said.<\/p>\n
Police remained focused on identifying all those involved and further enforcement action was likely as enquiries continued.<\/p>\n
Police earlier confirmed they are investigating links between the assaults and a compilation video posted to social media which has a caption claiming it is a group of young men “exposing predators” in Invercargill.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The video has three separate clips with groups of youths surrounding and\/or chasing a person.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first clip, which appears to be filmed at night in Queens Park, shows a youth running after a young male and then pinning them to the ground.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The pursuer then asks whether the male had come to the park to meet a 15-year-old.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The second shows a trio of youths chasing someone who escapes into their ute. As the person drives away the group attack the vehicle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The third shows a pack attack at Invercargill shopping centre where a victim is kicked in the head and hit multiple times.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0– Allied Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two teenagers have been charged over serious assaults in an Invercargill park where the victims were lured using…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-447569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447569","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=447569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}