Man arrested over ‘terror stabbing’
A STABBING in which a man rampaged with a baseball bat and knife hurling racist abuse is being treated as a far-Right terrorist incident.
A 50-year-old from Stanwell was held on suspicion of attempted murder and racially aggravated public order offences. Officers were called to the Surrey village at 10.30pm on Saturday over a man acting aggressively and shouting racist comments while carrying weapons on a residential road. Vehicles had been damaged.
They then received a call about a stabbing. Police say the suspect for both incidents is the same man.
A 19-year-old man was being treated for non-life threatening injuries.
Vincent Sutherland, who lives on the road, heard shouting around 8pm on Saturday. Mr Sutherland, 54, said: “He was shouting ‘Kill a Muslim’ and ‘White supremacy’, and then I went inside and I heard a load of banging.”
He added that the suspect is normally “polite, he always says hello to me”.
Nemer Salem, 24, who also lives in the road and is originally from Syria, said the man “started saying some crazy things about Muslims and I just shut the window and went inside. I’m a Muslim and I got a little bit worried.”
Theresa May thanked the emergency services for their handling of the incident, adding: “Vile, hateful far-Right extremism has no place in our society.”
A COUSIN of Christchurch gunman Brenton Tarrant has demanded he gets the death penalty.
Donna Cox spoke about her relative, as other family members also expressed their shock.
Fifty people were killed in shootings at two mosques in New Zealand, on Friday.
Tarrant, 28, was arrested and charged over the killings.
Ms Cox said: “He deserves the death penalty for what he has done and it hurts to say that because he is family but for somebody, who has taken that many lives of other people, it’s only fair that he deserves the same thing.”
Both Tarrant’s uncle and grandmother apologised for his actions.
Terry Fitzgerald said he could not believe his nephew was responsible for the deaths. “We’re so sorry for the families there, for the dead and the injured,” he said.
His grandmother Marie Fitzgerald, 81, said she was “gobsmacked”.
She said: “He spent most of his time on computers. It’s only since he travelled overseas that the boy has changed completely.
“We are so sorry for the families. We just want to go home and hide.”
Tarrant’s other grandmother Joyce Tarrant said he was never the same after his father’s suicide in 2003.
It has been revealed that Tarrant planned his massacre in a modest one-bedroom rented apartment in Dunedin, south of Christchurch.
Hours after the shooting, nearby residents were evacuated as police swarmed the area.
Scary
A neighbour said: “We were in shock. The thing we were living next to the past year...it’s scary to know that’s what was in the house. All those guns, equipment to blow things up.
“We didn’t know about it.”
The woman said she did not believe Tarrant had a job, and had always come and gone from the home alone.
But he travelled a lot, she said, often for months at a time.
“The last time we noticed he was away was November, he came back early February,” she said.
Another neighbour said he had also never seen anyone coming or going from Tarrant’s home, but said Tarrant had always given him a smile and a wave in passing.
Tarrant settled in Dunedin in the far south after years of travelling, and joined the local Bruce Rifle Club where he was said to use a AR-15 rifle, the civilian version of the US Army’s M16 assault rifle. The club’s vice-president Scott Williams said he “presented as a regular guy”. He added: “I ran into him three or four times and he seemed fine. Who would have thought? I am just shocked, stunned, dismayed.”
A horrified mother has told how she listened to her teenage son dying after he was shot during the massacre while on the phone to her.
Hamza Mustafa, 16, rang his mother Salwa in a panic when the mass shooting began inside the Al Noor Mosque on Friday.
The teen was desperately trying to flee the gunman with his injured brother Zaid, 13, when he made the chilling call.
Salwa, whose husband Khaled, 44, died in the massacre, said: “He said, ‘Mum, there’s someone come into the mosque and he’s shooting us’.
After that I heard shooting and he screamed and after that I didn’t hear him.”
Salwa said she could only listen as his life slowly slipped away.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern met with mourners at a mosque in New Zealand’s capital yesterday.
Wearing a black headscarf, the PM appeared visibly moved as she greeted and hugged members of the Muslim community and laid a floral tribute at a makeshift memorial at Kilbirnie Mosque in Wellington.
Ms Ardern said: “Their message was one of gratitude, for the outpouring of love they’ve experienced from the people of Wellington and of the acknowledgement of grief that the community feels.
“I want to pass on my deepest gratitude and thanks on behalf of the whole country to the police, the first responders, the hospital staff who I met yesterday, right through to the teachers, many of whom kept students in lockdown on Friday and who will be dealing with the fallout from that for a long time to come.”
She confirmed that the bodies of those killed were being released to family members last night.
She expects all the bodies to be returned to families byWednesday.
Ms Ardern confirmed 34 survivors remained in Christchurch Hospital, with 12 in intensive care.