Tense encounters in shooting manhunt
Alert rural residents share warnings after campervan violence. Ruby Nyika, Libby Wilson and Mike Mather report.
It was his ‘‘strange’’ walk that first raised alarm bells when the man stopped a group of locals and asked for directions outside Whitikahu School.
They knew a massive manhunt was under way after Australian tourist Sean McKinnon was fatally shot when an intruder burst into his campervan on a deserted country road about 25 minutes from Raglan early on Friday morning.
McKinnon’s fiancee, Canadian midwife Bianca Buckley, ran two kilometres on a dark, rugged road for help. His body was found in the campervan on Friday morning after it was abandoned in Gordonton, nearby.
Police said information from the public helped locate the alleged killer.
Nicki Quinn, who runs the Morrinsville Community Facebook Page, said her partner and a couple of others were working near Whitikahu School when they spotted a ‘‘strange-looking’’ man apparently attempting to hitchhike down the road about 4pm on Friday.
Aware of the earlier incident, they stopped what they were doing to call the police – but before they could do that, the man walked right up to them.
Quinn said the man was walking in a funny way and, as they spoke to him, appeared to be fiddling with something under his jacket.
He told the trio he was trying to find his brother’s farm, but he did not appear to know the address. After the man walked away one of the three called the police.
Alarmed by her partner’s account of the unsettling encounter, Quinn posted a description of what happened on the Facebook page as well as a few associated community pages, and it was not long before others began sharing the posts around.
‘‘I was just concerned about anyone local picking this guy up and something happening to them. At this stage we didn’t even know if he was the guy or not.
‘‘It turned out a lot of others had seen him. He appeared weird to everyone.’’
Narissa Taylor of Te Aroha was returning home from visiting a friend in Orini when she encountered a man walking on the road near the intersection of Tenfoot and Whitikahu roads, about 4.30pm on Friday.
‘‘He was walking across the road and he had his hand up as if he was telling me to stop.’’
The man was wearing dark