Gunman surrenders

Press, 24 July 1985, Page 8

Gunman surrenders

PA Hastings A gunman surrendered to the police after holding a family hostage for two hours and a half last evening in a popular tourist restaurant high on a hill just outside Havelock North. Armed police had surrounded the restaurant at 5 p.m. and were in touch by telephone with the man, who was holding the restaurant proprietor, his wife, and two teen-age daughters as hostages. At 7.30 p.m. the man allowed the hostages out and surrendered to the police after telephone talks with police negotiators. Members of the man’s family were also at a police command post just below the restaurant. No shot was fired. The man, aged between 24 and 30, was armed with a sawn-off shotgun and had several rounds of ammuni--

tion taken in an earlier incident in a Hastings sports shop, said Chief Superintendent Brian Burrows, the Hawke’s Bay area police commander. No-one was hurt in the the drama, which began at 3.45 p.m., when the Hastings police received a report of a domestic incident at a house in Flaxmere, on the outskirts of Hastings. From the house a car was followed to a sports shop in the middle of Hastings, then to Peak House Restaurant, just below a popular tourist look-out on Te Mata Peak, overlooking the Heretaunga Plains. Police said later last evening that a man, aged 24, had been arrested and charged with aggravated robbery and presenting a firearm. He was to appear in the District Court at Hastings today.