Liquor shop killers laughed after shooting (+video)

The three-men involved in the fatal shooting of Navtej Singh in south Auckland left the store laughing at what they had done.
View video: Auckland liquor shop murder

Navtej Singh, 30, a father of three young children, was shot in the chest during the robbery at Manurewa about 9pm on Saturday and died early this morning.

Detective inspector Jim Gallagher says the group were well aware the man had been shot in the chest area with a firearm.  

"Whether or not they knew it was a fatal shot was beside the point.

"If you shoot someone, what do you expect, there's a big chance they're going to die."

Speaking to a packed media conference this afternoon Gallagher, the officer in charge of Operation Riverton, pleaded for anyone with information about the shooting to come forward to police.

He said those close to the offenders will recognise them immediately when they see the camera footage from the incident.

"Those close to them will know exactly what they've done because after they left the shop and joined their mate in the car, they left at speed, and would have returned to an address and celebrated what they had achieved," he said.

He says video footage reveals the three offenders who entered the Manurewa store around 9pm were male Pacific Islanders or Maori.

One man with a loaded .22 loaded calibre rifle, was wearing a leather biker jacket with hooded sweatshirt underneath it, with a hood over his head.  He also had a scarf over his face in an effort to disguise his appearance. 

The other two didn't have facial disguises, were wearing hoodies with writing on them – one of them appears to be something written in Maori, Gallagher said.

Gallagher said police would also like to speak to the driver of a white four-wheel-drive vehicle, possibly an older model Ford Explorer.  The vehicle was seen on the street around the time of the shooting, and left at speed driving towards the Shifnal Drive end of Riverton Drive.

Police would also like to speak to four females who were seeking to purchase liquor in Mr Singh's store after the shooting. 

Gallagher said they arrived in a blue sedan and may well have seen something of what took place. He said the females looked like they were dressed to go out for the evening.

Police would also like to speak to a man who entered the shop and took a box of Alco pops from a chiller shortly after the shooting. 

"He should make himself known and perhaps reimburse the owner for that box as well," Gallagher said.

He says all three offenders at some stage removed property from the shop, including boxes of liquor and money from the till.

Mr Singh, was a 30-year-old family man with three children under five. He had been running the business in south Auckland for the past three years – he had owned his Riverton Road business for four months.

"The tragedy can probably only be fully felt by the close members of his family," Gallagher said.

"The expectation now is for the people who can assist the police, to make themselves known and come forward."

POLICE DEFEND RESPONSE TIME

Police have defended the time it took emergency services to reach the store after the shooting.

In any emergency callout involving firearms, police had to follow a standard procedure to ensure the safety of everyone, Mr Gallagher said.

Mr Singh's colleague Gurwinder Singh had criticised the response time from police and ambulance services.

As Takanini's Sikh community gathered around the grieving family today, family spokesman Sandeep Verma, said Mr Singh was kept waiting for over 30 minutes.

"He might still be alive if they came quicker," he told Fairfax Media.

He was with him and was outraged at the delay, saying the police did not know what they were doing. He believes the police were delayed by following a GPS system that failed to disclose the road was not linked to the motorway.

At one point Mr Singh was lying on the floor with a bullet wound and began to cough up blood.

"Then he got up and went to the toilet and then came back on lay on the ground."

Mr Verma said he kept waiting and listening for the sound of the police.

"It was the worst time of my whole life."

Mr Singh's wife was at their Takanini home – which is near the liquor store – but is deeply shocked.

They had three girls, the oldest five.

Mr Singh's aging father is in Punjab, India, trying to get a New Zealand visa to come here for the funeral.

'COLD, COWARDLY, CALLOUS ACT'

Police inquiry head Detective Senior Sergeant Dave Pizzini said security camera footage of the incident showed Mr Singh was not resisting the robbers.

"He was complying with their threats and demands. There doesn't seem to be any reason at all for taking the action that they have. It's quite a cold, cowardly, callous act," Mr Pizzini told Radio New Zealand.

"There has been an element of planning. They've clearly gone into the store, the three of them, with a loaded 22 calibre rifle, and they've demonstrated that they're prepared to use it. It doesn't get much more serious than that."

Mr Pizzini said he hadn't reviewed the incident response but said the need to give firearms to the responding officers could have contributed to the delay.

"It had to be (an armed response) because it was a firearms incident where a shot had been discharged," he said.

"There can be some delays experienced while we arm our staff because as you know New Zealand Police isn't generally armed. General duty staff attended, they were the initial respondents to the scene, and they had to be issued with firearms."

SAFETY FIRST

Ambulance staff said they had a vehicle ready within 10 minutes but had to wait for police to declare the area safe.

"Our crews were actually on the scene inside of 10 minutes," St John regional operations manager Gary Salmon told Radio New Zealand.

He said ambulance staff attending a shooting incident proceed to what is called a safe forward point as close to the incident as police deem to be safe and wait for clearance.

Mr Salmon said ambulance staff were able to resuscitate Navtej Singh and get him to hospital and it was hard to tell what that delay meant for his likelihood of surviving.

He said he could understand Gurwinder Singh's desire to get him into an ambulance car as soon as possible but staff had to consider their safety.

"Of course the sooner we get him to hospital the better, but it is just too dangerous for us to enter a zone where according to our information there were three people with guns roaming around who had shot somebody."

The shooting was the latest in several armed robberies in the Manurewa area using either guns or knives and several people say they are feeling unsafe in the area.

Anyone with information can phone 0508 RIVERTON – (O508 748 378)

- with NZPA

- © Fairfax NZ News