Shooters frighten residents

Press, 17 April 1978, Page 6

Shooters frighten residents

Frightened residents at Lincoln and Parklands yesterday complained to the police about their houses and properties being spattered with pellets from duckshooters’ guns.

A woman resident in South Belt, Lincoln, said her house had been hit three times by shotgun blasts since the season opened on Saturday morning. She told the police that she had been frightened to go outside while shooters were blazing away little more than 50m from her home. Pellets had struck both the walls and the roof of her house, the woman said. A resident of Curzon Place, Parklands, said pellets

had several times struck a tin fence surrounding his property and the walls of his home. They had been fired by shooters a short distance awav in the Parklands reserve.

No injury has been reported. but the Christchurch police said last evening that they were treating the incidents as serious.

“Someone is bound to get hurt sooner or later unless shooters are a iot more careful,” a spokesman said.

He said the police had gone to the areas concerned but in each case the offenders had left.

Last year, several residents in the Spencerville area complained to the Waimairi County Council about the “inconsiderate behaviour” of some duckshooters.

The residents said they had been disturbed by gunshots from 2 a.m. to 10 p.m. The legal shooting hours are between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.