Fire triggers event fears

A MASSIVE fire at the Auckland venue being built to host the 2021 APEC forum raged for a second day yesterday, as New Zealand officials insisted the event would go ahead.

The blaze broke out at the SkyCity convention centre construction site on Tuesday and was still blanketing the city with smoke a day later.

Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters said the centre was “extraordinarily unlikely” to host leaders from the 21 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum nations in November 2021 but said Auckland had “alternatives”.

A 17-YEAR-OLD boy gunned down another student outside their school, ditched his gun and slipped into a class without arousing suspicion, evading capture for almost two hours as he joined thousands of students locked down inside classrooms, police said. The teen was arrested in a gym class by officers who used surveillance video to track him after he shot and wounded a 16-year-old boy, then handed his gun in a backpack to someone in a car.

“It’s disturbing to see that he was able to go right around to his normal business,” police Captain John Cregan said. “It’s a scary situation.”

The two teens got into an argument before the gunman shot the victim twice. He fell but was able to get back up and run to a car that took him to the hospital, where he was in a stable condition.

Police don’t know if the person who took the backpack and drove away knew a gun was inside. They’re investigating whether the shooting was gang related. More than 10,000 students and staffers in a complex with three schools were locked down after the shooting outside Ridgway High School in Santa Rosa, north of San Francisco.