A deadly shooting left two dead in Auckland, New Zealand, on Thursday, hours before the city witnesses the opening match of FIFA Women’s World Cup.
The attacker was armed with a pump-action shotgun, New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said. He added that the police arrived a minute after the first emergency call.
At least five other people, including police officers, were injured and the gunman is also dead after the incident on a downtown construction site.
Who was the shooter?
There has been no formal identification of the gunman. It is believed they were a 24-year-old male who was employed at the construction site, Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said. He was the subject of a sentence of home detention but had an exemption to work at the site. Coster added that he was known for “primarily family violence history”. “There is nothing to suggest that he has presented a higher-level risk than was indicated by that history,” he further said.
Soccer teams in town
The teams from New Zealand, Norway, Italy, the US, Vietnam and Portugal were in the city when the shooting occured. Close to the site of the shooting was the Norway team’s hotel. The team captain said they were awakened by a helicopter outside the hotel. The Italian team’s gtraining has been hampered and delayed as the players are unable to get out of their hotel, while the US team said all its players and staff were safe.
FIFA told Reuters that the incident was an isolated one and is not related to the football operations. It added that the opening match will proceed as planned.
Several streets in Auckland were cordoned off, all ferry services into the city were cancelled, and buses were asked to detour some areas of the city. Maurane Mifort-Paon, a 18-year-old tourist from France, said: “At first I was kind of worried but when I saw how the police were everywhere, it was very reassuring.”
A FIFA Fan Festival event just a few blocks from the shooting was delayed. Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown said the shooting was not in any way related to the World Cup.
Gun violence is rare in New Zealand, which tightened its gun laws after a gunman killed 51 Muslim worshippers in Christchurch in 2019 in the country’s worst peace-time mass shooting.
The government has banned all military style semi-automatics and other deadly guns.