A man has been charged with murder among other offences after a woman was found dead at a Whirinaki property, following a trail of evidence that began with a burning car on the side of a rural Northland road. <\/p>\n
Police have launched a homicide investigation with inquiries still in their early stages, though officers say no one else is sought in connection with the death.<\/p>\n
Detective Inspector Rhys Johnston said police began the investigation after an SUV was located alight on Monday morning north of Dargaville.<\/p>\n
“Emergency services attended Ounuwhao Road near State Highway 14, at around 9.11am, and urgent inquiries got underway to locate the registered owner of the vehicle.”<\/p>\n
Police subsequently attended the registered owner’s address in Opononi, more than 50km to the northwest at the mouth of the Hokianga Harbour.<\/p>\n
“A burglary had occurred, but the woman was not present, increasing our concerns.”<\/p>\n
Johnston said a man was then located in “suspicious circumstances” walking along State Highway 14 in possession of “several items of interest”. He was arrested.<\/p>\n
Officers carried out further inquiries at an address in Whirinaki, near the woman’s home.<\/p>\n
“Sadly, we have located a woman deceased,” he said.<\/p>\n
A scene examination at the Whirinaki address continued today while police carry out further inquiries in the Opononi area.<\/p>\n
Johnston said the woman had last been in contact with wh\u0101nau on Sunday night.<\/p>\n
“What has taken place is simply a tragedy. We are putting support in place for wh\u0101nau, who have travelled into the region following news of what has happened.”<\/p>\n
Formal identification of the victim was underway and police were not seeking anyone else in connection with the death.<\/p>\n
A 26-year-old man has been charged with murder, arson, theft of a motor vehicle, burglary and using a credit card to obtain a pecuniary advantage.<\/p>\n
He will appear in the Whang\u0101rei District Court today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been charged with murder among other offences after a woman was found dead at a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67,42,43,1067,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-456916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-northland","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456916","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=456916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}