At least two people were killed and five others injured after a gunman stormed a building under construction in Auckland, New Zealand, early Thursday morning, hours before the first Women’s World Cup football match was due to begin in the city.
The gunman was later killed, police said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. They also said a police officer was among the injured; he was taken to a hospital in critical condition and his condition had stabilized.
Authorities have not identified the shooter, but police said he was believed to be 24 years old and had worked at the construction site where the shooting took place.
Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said the gunman’s motive was believed to be “connected to his work at the scene”. He was under house arrest but had permission to be on the construction site. He was known to police because he had a history of domestic violence, Mr. Coster, adding that there was also “some evidence of a mental health history.”
According to authorities, he did not have a gun license for the shotgun he was using.
The New Zealand Herald also reported this that he appeared in a local court in March on charges including assaulting a woman and wounding with intent to harm, and that he had been ordered to wear an electronic ankle bracelet.
The shooting occurred when teams from New Zealand and Norway were due to play at Eden Park Stadium at 7pm local time, about three miles from the scene of the shooting. Several World Cup teams and many fans reside in Auckland’s central business district, and the shooting took place near the Norwegian team’s hotel and near a fan festival set up for the tournament.
The United States team, which will play its first game of the tournament in Auckland against Vietnam in two days, will also stay nearby. The teams from Norway and the US said their players and staff were safe and their preparations would continue.
New Zealand’s game against Norway on Thursday evening began on a sombre note: a moment of silence for the victims of the shooting. Players from both teams gathered in midfield and New Zealand’s reserves and coaching staff left their dugouts to stand on the sidelines in solidarity.
A minute of silence will also be observed at the match between Australia and Ireland on Thursday evening, FIFA said in a statement.
New Zealand police began receiving reports of a person firing a gun at the construction site at about 07:22 local time, Mr Coster said.
Police said after an armed man entered the high-rise building — which was occupied by dozens of construction workers — on Queen Street below, he opened fire on the third floor and made his way through the 21-story building, firing as he went.
Passersby and commuters heard the volley of gunfire during the morning rush hour. Armed police officers and vehicles swarmed the area, and authorities sealed off parts of the city.
The shooting took place in a busy downtown area filled with office buildings and hotels across the street from a ferry terminal on the city’s waterfront.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said at a press conference that the gunman was armed with a pump-action rifle and appeared to have acted alone.
Within minutes, dozens of police officers descended on the property with automatic weapons, warned people to take cover and led them out of the area. Streets were closed in a two-block area and a police helicopter hovered overhead. Officers chased the gunman to the upper floors, and once there, gunfire – audible in the street below the tower – ensued.
Police confronted the gunman in an elevator shaft where he had barricaded himself and tried to make contact with him, police said.
“The perpetrator shot at the police and injured an officer in the process,” the police said. Shots were exchanged and the perpetrator was later found dead.
Mr Coster said he was unsure if the gunman had been killed by police.
Construction workers, many of whom hid in the building during the shooting, were released hours later and police evacuated the building.
Mr Hipkins said the Women’s World Cup will go ahead as planned. FIFA, football’s global governing body and organizer of the tournament, the top leaders said had communicated with New Zealand authorities and that the organization was in “continuous contact with the participating teams affected by this incident”.
At a second press conference on Thursday afternoon, he said authorities would investigate how the suspect was treated while under house arrest and whether there were any red flags about his behaviour.
Asked whether the attack demonstrated a failure of New Zealand’s strict gun laws, he said authorities should investigate how the gunman obtained the firearm “before passing judgment on the robustness or otherwise of our gun laws.”
The Norway players were all in their hotel during the shooting; some were still asleep, but according to local news reports, a few had come down for breakfast in a dining room just off the lobby on the ground floor. When police closed off access to the area around the shooting, guards asked members of the Norwegian delegation to stay inside the hotel, said Lise Klaveness, president of the Norwegian Football Association.
“Everything is calm in the Norwegian squad,” Halvor Lea, a spokesperson for the Norwegian women’s team, said in a statement. “Preparations are proceeding as normal.”
In another statement, Maren Mjelde, the captain of the Norwegian team, said many players were most likely awakened by the sound of a helicopter outside and the emergency vehicles arriving in front.
“We felt safe the entire time,” she said.
This was New Zealand’s first major shooting since the country banned most semi-automatic guns in 2019, after 51 people were killed when a white supremacist opened fire on praying Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch.
Days after that shooting, Jacinda Ardern, then Prime Minister, announced a temporary ban on most semi-automatic weapons and began a months-long gun buyback and amnesty program. A sweeping nationwide ban went into effect later that year.
Even before that, gun ownership was relatively rare in New Zealand and gun violence is considered uncommon. But in 1997, six people were killed and four others injured in the North Island town of Raurimu.
And in 1990 a gunman in the small seaside town of Aramoana killed 13 people and injured three others before being shot dead by police. The shootings led to a 1992 change in regulations for military-style semi-automatic weapons.
Julia Macur And Andrew Dash reported from Auckland, New Zealand, and Yan Zhuang from Sydney, Australia. Tarik Panja contributed reporting from Sydney, Australia.