Who killed Eddie Peters?
Eddie Peters lived a rough life but he has been described as a gentle man ‘‘who would never hurt a fly’’.
It’s been nearly two months since Peters, 45, was found beaten on Diaz Drive in the Hastings suburb of Flaxmere, just after midnight on November 16. He died one week later of his injuries in Wellington Regional Hospital.
There have been no arrests in relation to the case and Detective Senior Sergeant Brent Greville said police were still seeking information that could help establish the identity of those responsible.
Speaking for the first time, Peters’ brother, who asked not to be named, told Stuff Eddie was a gentle man, who would never hurt a fly.
‘‘He wasn’t a violent type of person. Even though he lived around people . . . in that kind of sense. Himself, he was quite gentle.’’
Their mother died when Eddie was about 10 years old which, mentally, was ‘‘quite damaging’’. ‘‘That affected all of us . . . It really set the way how he carried on for his life after that.’’ Their father raised them, along with another younger brother and a sister, in Hastings. ‘‘Our father went into depression, too. It was like there was no-one really there to care for Eddie as a normal family would.’’
He got into ‘‘a bit of trouble’’ in his younger days, but Eddie always treated others with respect.
He didn’t have many belongings and was not a stranger to the streets. At the time of his death,
he was living from house to house.
The family eventually drifted apart because of their mother’s death. ‘‘She was pretty much the rock of our family.’’
Now, they have been brought together again by unimaginable circumstances.
Eddie had a daughter, who’s now a nurse, and his brother admitted he found being a father hard.
But his daughter was ‘‘his heart and soul’’. She and her mother, who had separated from Eddie, were still ‘‘very close’’ with his siblings and father.
Eddie used to phone his brother in the early mornings, talking about things on his mind; things troubling him.
‘‘It was pretty tough for my older brother . . . He always was a survivor. We often said he had nine lives. He lived life with consequences and was fully in. He understood a lot of things he was doing may not have been the right thing. He was trying to survive like everybody else.’’
Eddie’s killer or killers didn’t really know him, if they were ‘‘really that angry to do what they did to him’’, his brother said.
His exact movements on the day of his death are unclear. He was attending a funeral earlier in the day, and police previously said he’d been drinking.
But the family don’t have any real answers or closure. ‘‘We still haven’t had any clarity yet from the police.’’
His brother understood there were a ‘‘large amount’’ of people at the funeral who were gangaffiliated. However, he had family members of his own who were involved in gangs but no-one had ever been hurt as a result of gang violence.
‘‘We’re all sort of wondering who it is, or who they are, and why they chose my brother that night.’’ Victim Support had warned him the investigation could go ‘‘quite the distance’’, because of the lack of information.