Neighbour dives for cover in gang shooting

A Wairoa resident heard four or five loud shots then silence in a gang shooting on his street.

The man, who would not be named for fear of reprisals, said he was in his McLean St garage about 10pm on Thursday when he heard the shots, fired in quick succession.

"I heard the shots and basically hid and rang the police. It sounded like a high-powered weapon to me. I just switched my lights off and ducked for cover."

The town is no stranger to altercations between the Mongrel Mob and Black Power and the resident said that something had been brewing for the past three or four weeks.

"It's just one of those things. There generally isn't too much grief with them but people up here know if something is up. We're all just absolutely sick of them, to be honest."

Detective Senior Sergeant Craig Scott, of Gisborne, said about 12 people were involved in the confrontation, but only one person was known to have been hurt.

The victim, a 20-year-old man, was hit in the face by a bullet. He was in a stable condition in Hawke's Bay Hospital.

Mr Scott said the armed offenders squad was called and armed police would maintain a presence in the town for at least the weekend in an effort to keep the peace. Six arrests were made yesterday, but none in relation to the shooting, which happened outside one of four flats at 16 McLean St.

The occupants of the flats were Black Power associates who moved in about two months ago from elsewhere in Wairoa, said the resident who had been in his garage when the confrontation erupted. He was unsure what it was about "but I think it probably had something to do with a fight that happened there the previous night".

He believed the victim was either an occupant or a visitor to the flat.

The last serious spate of violence was in 2003. In February of that year Mongrel Mob member Kevin Tuahine was shot and killed. A Black Power member was cleared of murdering him.

In April Joel Storey, 18, was paralysed after being hit in what was believed to have been a botched gang shooting in the car park of Wairoa's Affco freezing works. The shooting is unsolved.

In November 2003 a Black Power member in a van was shot dead by Mongrel Mob members after a brawl between 70 members of the two gangs outside the town's courthouse. Two Mongrel Mob members went to prison for the killing.

In 1988 a shootout between gang members on the town's main street, Marine Pde, ended with two deaths.

- © Fairfax NZ News