Family left stunned by rampage
BRENTON Tarrant’s distraught family have told the people of New Zealand “we’re so sorry” for the Christchurch massacre.
The 28-year-old accused mass killer’s grandmother Marie Fitzgerald said she was “gobsmacked”.
“We don’t know what to think … The media’s saying he’s planned it for a long time so he’s obviously not of sound mind,” Ms Fitzgerald told Channel 9.
“It’s just so much to take in that somebody in our family would do anything like this.
“He spent most of his time … playing games on computers but I don’t think girls were on the agenda, he said getting married was too hard.
“It’s only since he travelled overseas that that boy has changed completely.”
A year ago he returned to Grafton for his sister’s birthday and family did not notice anything wrong.
“He was just his normal self we chatted and that sort of thing and had a meal together to celebrate that occasion,” she said.
His uncle Terry Fitzgerald said he could barely believe his nephew was responsible when his face appeared on television.
“We’re so sorry for the families over there for the dead and the injured … I just want to go home and hide,” he said.
Tarrant’s other grandmother Joyce Tarrant said her grandson was never the same after finding his father dead by his own hand in 2010.
“I begged them to take him to get counselling but he never went,” she said yesterday.
He was a bit of a loner, she said, but always made sure he visited when he came home.
Former schoolmates and family friends described their heartache at discovering the once “fat, freckly kid” had unleashed hell in Christchurch.
One friend of the Tarrants said the well-known family had little knowledge of how their son was radicalised.
“They had no idea. His father would roll in his grave,” they said.
It is understood Sharon Tarrant last saw her son three months ago on a trip to New Zealand about Christmas time, where they shared dinner a number of times.
A vigil will take place at Grafton’s Christ Church Cathedral at 6pm today in memory of the 50 victims. In Dunedin, police have moved to protect the Brenton Tarrant’s flat from revenge attacks and said the gun club where he remained a regular member until his arrest on Friday was receiving nasty blowback from the public.
Heavily armed officers were on shift at Tarrant’s home, where he lived alone and strategised his rampage.
One officer said: “We’re just babysitting an empty house. All I can tell you is he likes peanut butter and tomato sauce from what we’ve seen.”
Police confirmed that “items of interest” had been seized from the flat in a quiet street of Andersons Bay, but would not comment what they were.
A former NZ soldier, Peter Breidahl, was reported in New Zealand media as saying he had visited the Bruce Rifle Club three times in 2017 and heard conversations from shooters about a zombie apocalypse and Port Arthur killer Martin Bryant.
Breidahl was quoted as saying: “The conversations I had and the people I met literally terrified me to my core and I left early.”
It has been confirmed Tarrant was a regular at the club but members have angrily denied reports it was a hotbed of dangerous right-wing extremists. The gun club, about 30 minutes south of Dunedin, was yesterday shut to the public as detectives visited the site.