One of our assault rifles is missing
Stars light up Christmas in the Park
TENS of thousands of people packed out the Auckland Domain for annual outdoor spectacular, Christmas in the Park last night.
Since 1994 Coca-Cola Christmas in the Park has been an annual, free event featuring live performances from singers, dancers and musicians – including, above left to right, Jessie Cassin Caleb Jago-Ward and Vanessa Williams, and, of course, left, Santa himself.
The event first took place in Auckland and since then, there have been 47 shows in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
Broadcaster Jason Gunn was the MC of this year’s Auckland event, with performances by award-winning singer Hollie Smith and vocal trio The Koi Boys. As part of the entertainment, more than 500kg of fireworks lit up the skies in octopus-like shapes over the Super City.
Proceeds from this year’s concert will go towards Youthline, an organisation which offers advice and support to young people. A gun owner whose high-powered semi-automatic assault rifle was lost after being sent by courier is worried it may have ended up in the hands of criminals.
Brian Furth, a world air-gun field target shooting champion, is $1400 out of pocket and convinced someone has stolen his AR-15 rifle.
New Zealand Couriers admits it has lost the AR-15, a gun often used in mass shootings in the United States, but says it didn’t know what the package contained, and wouldn’t have agree to carry the rifle if it had known.
‘‘Those things are dangerous in the wrong hands,’’ Furth said.
In October, an AR-15 was used by Las Vegas mass shooter Stephen Paddock, who killed 58 people in a hail of bullets fired from a window of the Mandalay Bay hotel.
Furth legally purchased the rifle for target shooting with a standard A-Cat firearms licence, which allows a person to own and use rifles and shotguns.
He received the rifle on November 14, but the gun jammed when testing it that morning. He freed the rifle’s bolt with a screwdriver, a ‘‘mongrel of a job’’, and called specialist automatic gun store NZAR15 in Te Horo, Wellington to tell them he was returning the rifle that afternoon.
Furth said he packed it into the same box, put ‘‘firearm beware’’ on the package, and dropped it at a friend’s automotive parts business to be collected.
The high-powered assault rifle never reached Te Horo.
New Zealand Couriers confirmed two days later it was lost. Furth was able to confirm it was his package seen in the hands of a Hamilton driver in a CCTV picture from the depot.
The company provided a claims form, and Furth filed a lost firearm report with police.
New Zealand Couriers said there would be no compensation as Furth used his friend’s courier ticket and didn’t inform the courier it was a rifle. On Tuesday he reported the rifle stolen.
The competitive shooter is upset at being out of pocket, and is questioning how a high-powered rifle could have gone missing without trace.
Managing director of Freightways, which owns New Zealand Couriers, Dean Bracewell, emphasised the company did not know the package contained a firearm.
‘‘We don’t accept firearms into our system for delivery, we have no agreement with the sender to do so, and we weren’t aware that we were carrying it.
‘‘Mr Furth visited one of our customers and put it through their general freight.’’
He confirmed the company had conducted a nationwide search of all branches, including tracking the package through CCTV footage.
A police spokesperson, in an emailed statement, said the case was assigned for investigation.