Arsenal found after woman shot

Press, 12 March 1983, Page 1

Arsenal found after woman shot

PA Wanganui After several hours of surgery, a woman shot in an early-morning incident at her home in the central North Island farming town of Raetihi was in a stable condition in Wanganui Base Hospital last evening. A man arrested and charged with causing grievous bodily harm was later declared unfit to plead when he appeared in the District Court at Wanganui. He had been driven to Wanganui by. the police after he had been given medication by a Raetihi doctor.

A solicitor, Mr M. W. H. Lance, appeared on the man's behalf and Judge Lowe suppressed the man’s name and the name of the shot woman. The man was remanded to Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital for 14 days observation. Gunshots at 4.30 a.m. had awakened residents of Raetihi but it was almost three hours later that a man heeded police appeals to surrender. After a woman had been taken away from a house by ambulance, Raetihi’s policeman, Constable M. Suther-

land, spoke to a man who had locked himself inside. He said the man had told him to come in to see the guns and ammunition he had spread on the floor.

Armed police flown in from Wanganui, later reinforced from other districts, saw a man walking back and forth on the front lawn of the house, and armed with a rifle, an axe, a knife, and a boomerang. When the man gave himself up at 7.15 a.m the police found nine loaded rifles and a lot of ammunition in the house.