Police hunt for pair after body found
Police have launched a homicide investigation after a dead man and wounded woman were found in a light industrial area of South Auckland.
A 28-year-old man was dead and a female was taken to hospital seriously injured with gunshot wounds, said Detective Inspector Faa Va’aelua.
‘‘We are confident that this is not a random incident and we are currently following positive lines of inquiries to identify two Tongan male offenders believed to be involved in this incident,’’ he said.
The dead man and the woman were found lying on the ground on Mangere’s Greenwood Rd around 6am, he said.
Police were speaking with the female victim to establish the circumstances surrounding the incident.
The road is lined by paddocks and the Watercare Mangere Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Local residents said the police operation was concentrated in a paddock near the road’s intersection with Ascot Rd.
Chris Olsen lived near Greenwood Rd and said it was notorious for rubbish dumping and boy racers.
A cordon was to remain in place throughout yesterday on Greenwood Rd while police carried out a scene examination and a forensic analysis of a vehicle found at the scene, said Faa Va’aelua. Chris Olsen
Fly Park shift supervisor Sarah Davis woke to the ‘‘sound of a chopper flying round, as well as an ambulance siren’’ around 3.30am – and said she was surprised to see police cars outside her workplace on Ascot Rd yesterday morning.
She said there were no houses on Greenwood Rd and that police had blocked the road from both ends.
‘‘Business are still operating around here though,’’ Davis said.
An employee of Auckland Airport’s Holiday Inn, nearby, said Greenwood Rd had few streetlights and was ‘‘not an area people usually gather in’’.
She said it was lined with paddocks and construction sites, which were fenced off and were only accessible to authorised people.
‘‘It’s a dark road at night,’’ she said.
She said traffic flow was clogged on her way to work at 6.45am, which was unusual.
Local worker Ali Toufeu said when he arrived at work, around 5.50am, he saw an ambulance turning into Greenwood Rd.
‘‘I thought: ‘That is weird’, because there are no houses down there,’’ Toufeu said.
He said he could still see a lot of activity with police at the site at 8.30am across Ascot Rd, on the fields next to Greenwood Rd.