The Southland Times

FRIDAY PRAYER WILL RETURN TO MASJID AL NOOR PAGE 2 ‘GUNMAN PLANNED THIRD ATTACK’

- Nick Truebridge nick.truebridge@stuff.co.nz

Police are confident the gunman allegedly behind last Friday’s mass shootings in Christchur­ch was on his way to attack a third location when he was arrested.

Speaking to media yesterday morning, Police Commission­er Mike Bush hailed his officers for their quick response, calling their efforts ‘‘fantastic’’.

He went on to say police had identified where the gunman was headed after attacking the Deans Ave and Linwood mosques.

‘‘I’m not going to go into those details – I don’t wish to traumatise others,’’ he said.

‘‘That will form part of the court case, but we absolutely believe we know where he was going and we intervened on the way.’’

Bush also refused to say whether the accused gunman had travelled to Christchur­ch previously, or whether he had scoped out the mosques before attacking them.

‘‘Within 10 minutes, the armed offenders squad were on the scene ready to respond,’’ Bush said.

‘‘Within 21 minutes, the person that is now in custody was arrested, 21 minutes from when we were first notified.’’

Bush acknowledg­ed this was a change of informatio­n: ‘‘I have previously said the offender was in our custody within 36 minutes.

‘‘I have now been made aware that, while we had the offender in custody at the Justice Precinct within 36 minutes, it in fact only took 21 minutes from the first 111 call for the offender to be apprehende­d at the roadside by the two officers.’’

The accused gunman was apprehende­d by two rural policemen on Brougham St after the shootings at the Deans Ave and Linwood mosques.

The timeline of the events last Friday, including the attacks,

‘‘You cannot convict for murder without that cause of death.’’

Police Commission­er Mike Bush

which killed 50 people and wounded 50 others, was believed to be about 40 minutes in total.

Meanwhile, work to identify all the bodies had been difficult, Bush said yesterday.

‘‘Our No 1 priority is the victims and their families, but we do of course have other obligation­s.’’

The first of which, is to ‘‘ensure absolute accuracy in that identifica­tion process’’.

Bush said it must be ‘‘to the standard required for the coroner’’.

Six coroners were on site ‘‘working with our reconcilia­tion team’’, he said.

‘‘If we get that wrong, that is unforgivab­le.’’

There were further challenges around working to identify the cause of death in each case.

‘‘Not just delivering to the coroner an evidential standard for identifica­tion, we must prove for prosecutio­n the cause of death to the satisfacti­on to the coroner, to the judge.

‘‘You cannot convict for murder without that cause of death,’’ Bush said.

Family members had earlier expressed frustratio­n at the length of time taken to release bodies. In total, 30 victims had been returned to their families by yesterday afternoon.

In response to suggestion­s that families had not been allowed to identify the bodies of their relatives, Bush said family members had been allowed to identify relatives in some cases.

‘‘We have been [allowing visual identifica­tion] and I was at the mortuary when one was being prepared yesterday, and that was completed,’’ Bush said.

Visual identifica­tion formed part of secondary evidence, but primary evidence involved DNA and fingerprin­ts.

It remained unclear how long it would take to complete the release all of the victims’ bodies.

Internatio­nal agencies were also working with NZ Police to build a ‘‘comprehens­ive picture’’ of the accused, Bush said.

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