house fully engulfed in flames<\/a>.<\/p>\nA mother, another child and a boarder managed to escape.<\/p>\n
Police believe the fire was deliberately lit.<\/p>\n
Fire investigators confirmed accelerant was found at the property, they said.<\/p>\n
A scene guard was still in place on Wednesday evening.<\/p>\n
Resident Ting Huang told RNZ she was unsettled by what happened.<\/p>\n
“It was a shock when I heard,” she said.<\/p>\n
She said the community has kept to themselves, and that they did not want to speculate about the homicide.<\/p>\n
“We just feel really, really sorry for the family and their loss.”<\/p>\n
Huang had lived on the street for three decades, and said it had always been a very safe area.<\/p>\n
“Ever since the fire … I think there is a level of [trauma], and some of us even try and compress it,” she said.<\/p>\n
“There is no other way that we can actually speak about it, and we haven’t been sleeping very well ever since.”<\/p>\n
![\"Police](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/4JZU093_Media_1_jfif\")
<\/p>\n
\nFlowers left at the scene.
\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Finn Blackwell\n<\/p>\n
Up the road, resident Peter Lee said police have been going around asking locals for help.<\/p>\n
“[Police] just ask to see if our camera can see anything or not,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But our camera is a small one, [and can only see] our driveway.”<\/p>\n
He said the only thing that could be seen from the time was a fire engine speeding past to the scene.<\/p>\n
Lee said he was sorry to hear about the homicide, and worried it could happen again.<\/p>\n
“This case [is] not good, man.<\/p>\n
“We don’t know what happened, you know.”<\/p>\n
Investigators work tirelessly to piece together what happened<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Police said post-mortems had been carried out on the two victims.<\/p>\n
They confirmed one of the victims was the 36-year-old and, while they had not formally identified the second victim, were confident it was his 11-year-old son.<\/p>\n
The two further victims who were taken to hospital after the fire had both been discharged, police said.<\/p>\n
Detective Inspector Tofilau Faamanuia Vaaelua said someone was responsible for the death of this father and son and called on the public for CCTV footage.<\/p>\n
“We want to hear from anyone who has any information at all that they think may help,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Nothing is too small or irrelevant.”<\/p>\n
Vaaelua said it was an extremely traumatic time for the family involved.<\/p>\n
“We are determined to provide them with answers and bring this to a close so they can try and move forward with their lives.<\/p>\n
“It is imperative we find who is responsible for this.”<\/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":"A police guard at the scene of the Bucklands Beach double homicide fire. Photo: RNZ \/ Finn Blackwell…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-66076","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66076","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=66076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}