Christchurch mosque shooting: Police secure Brenton Tarrant’s Dunedin home, investigate shooting club
Police have moved to secure the Dunedin flat of Brenton Tarrant from a possible revenge attack, as a more detailed picture emerges of the alleged Christchurch mosque shooter.
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Police have moved to secure the Dunedin flat of twin mosque massacre accused Brenton Tarrant from revenge attack and said the gun club where he remained a regular member until his arrest on Friday was receiving nasty blowback from the public.
It comes as a more detailed picture begins to emerge of the Australian terrorist’s background.
A childhood friend from Tarrant’s home town of Grafton, in northeast NSW, described how he was bullied as a teenager for being overweight, The Australian reports.
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“We spent a lot of time together and there was a time when he was picked on pretty badly and I had to just go out of my way to have a yarn with him,” former Grafton Ghosts junior rugby league teammate Daniel Tuite told the newspaper.
“Grafton can be a pretty harsh place … so if you’re overweight and a bit what some people might call useless on the field, you’re going to probably get picked on. That’s why he just kept himself to himself.”
Tarrant’s under-15s team of 2005 was a sea of white faces, but the coach for that year was an Aboriginal man. “Where we’re from, we’d never even come in contact with Muslims, really,” Mr Tuite said.
He said a knee injury, along with Tarrant’s weight, was the precursor to the teenager hitting the gym. “Something just changed and he got really serious about exercise and got himself in shape.”
His neighbours in New Zealand say he rapidly “buffed up” in the months leading up to Friday’s attack. A Dunedin hotel manager, Justin, told news.com.au that Tarrant had seemed weird and gave off a “certain vibe”.
“I was wary of him,” he said.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton today revealed Tarrant had spent only 45 days in Australia in the last three years.
He would not answer whether Tarrant could be extradited to Australia after sentencing.
“Our focus is on the tragedy … proudly supporting the law enforcement,” he told Sky News.
“It’s taking all of our bandwidth”.
Dutton said it appears Tarrant had left Australia in 2010 to travel overseas.
Israeli officials have said Tarrant made a brief visit to Israel in October 2016 on a three-month tourist visa and stayed for nine days, Reuters reports.
Heavily armed officers were on shift at Tarrant’s home, where he lived alone and strategised his rampage.
One officer told News Corp Australia: “We’re just babysitting an empty house. All I can tell you is he likes peanut butter and tomato sauce from what we’ve seen.”
Police confirmed that “items of interest” had been seized from the flat in a quiet street of Andersons Bay, but would not comment what they were.
A former NZ soldier, Peter Breidahl, was reported in New Zealand media as saying he had visited the Bruce Rifle Club three times in 2017 and heard conversations from shooters about a zombie apocalypse and Port Arthur killer Martin Bryant.
Breidahl was quoted as saying: “The conversations I had and the people I met literally terrified me to my core and I left early.”
It has been confirmed Tarrant was a regular at the club but members have angrily denied reports it was a hotbed of dangerous right-wing extremists.
The gun club, located about 30 minutes south of Dunedin, was yesterday shut to the public as detectives visited the site to try and learn more about Tarrant.
Frans Laas, the club treasurer, declined to discuss Tarrant.
“At the moment I’m giving a statement to police,” he said.
He said the club members were “quite different” to what was reported.
“Mr Breidahl has some issues he will be facing in the future,” he said.
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Club members appear in photos shooting AR-15s, long-barrelled SLRs, M16s, .303s over a maximum 600-metre range.
Mr Laas said members had to be licenced to attend.
In a 2017 message for the Hunter National Training Scheme, Mr Laas told prospects: “HUNTS is designed for new hunters who are aged 18 plus, but younger hunters are welcome with guardian approval. HUNTS requires a level of fitness to carry a pack across country. A firearms licence is preferred but not mandatory.”
- with staff writers, wires
Originally published as Christchurch mosque shooting: Police secure Brenton Tarrant’s Dunedin home, investigate shooting club
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