New Zealand wonders what it could have done differently

DUNEDIN, New Zealand — The gun enthusiast with an Australian accent did not stand out among the 100 or so members of the Bruce Rifle Club, who practiced shooting at a range in a forest in southern New Zealand.

He favored a bolt-action hunting rifle and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and would participate in shooting competitions. No one saw any warning signs.

“He was polite,” said Scott Williams, the club’s vice president. “He would help put things away. He would help set up. He worked like a Trojan.”

But now New Zealand officials are wondering if anyone might have missed something about Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the 28-year-old suspect in the shootings at two mosques in Christchurch on Friday that left at least 50 people dead.

On Monday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she had ordered an inquiry into whether government agencies could have prevented the attack.

“The purpose of this inquiry is to look at what all relevant agencies knew — or could or should have known — about the individual and his activities, including his access to weapons,” she said at a news conference in Wellington, the capital.

She also said her Cabinet had agreed “in principle” to an overhaul of the country’s gun laws and was working out the details.

Earlier, Wally Haumaha, deputy New Zealand police commissioner, said identification specialists had worked through the night to identify the people killed at the Al Noor and Linwood mosques so their bodies could be returned to their families.

As of Monday night, 31 people were hospitalized in Christchurch, nine of them in critical condition. A 4-year-old was in critical condition at a hospital in Auckland, where she was flown after the attack.

Police investigations continued, as counterterrorism officers in Australia searched the homes of Tarrant’s mother and sister in the northeastern coastal towns of Lawrence and Sandy Beach. And in New Zealand, more than half a dozen police officers searched Tarrant’s residence near the center of Dunedin, about 220 miles south of Christchurch.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said Monday that Tarrant made two trips to the country in 2016, one for three days and the other for 43 days.

Turkish officials said they were investigating what he did there.