When the stocky Australian man moved into the bluish-gray house perched on a small incline in 2017, he told the young couple next door he had travelled the world and was now looking to settle down.
He trained with semiautomatic rifles at a gun club in a forest about a 45-minute drive south of Dunedin. He bulked up, hefting weights of up to 199 kilograms at a 24-hour gym. Either by choice or happenstance, the gym he picked had a view of a daycare centre for Muslim children across the street.He trawled the darkest corners of the internet, finding inspiration and kinship for his white-nationalist rage.
A flurry of activity. A police vehicle tows bomb disposal robot on the way to their investigation of the shooter's home in Dunedin, New Zealand."The other poignant feature of this for Dunedinites is, of course, the revelation that the evildoer lived among us – in my case, just three blocks away from my home," said Michael Woodhouse, a member of Parliament based here. "He was hiding in plain sight.
"There has not been a strong counterattack to it, [and] there's also been a lot of platforms that have been provided those views."In 2016, he visited Turkey twice, first in March and later in September, according to theLate that year, he visited Serbia, Montenegro and other parts of the former Yugoslavia, stopping at the sites of battles between Muslims and Christians during the centuries of Ottoman rule.
He was unemployed but provided a reference, according to the property manager, and agreed to pay eight weeks of rent – about $US1550 – upfront. He told the property manager he had money from his father's estate. Tarrant, in his manifesto, said he invested in cryptocurrency, which he used to fund his travels."The rent came through like clockwork.
Recreational shooters say no other club in the area offered shooting and target practice with military-style assault rifles. A video on YouTube of the rifle club that has since been deleted shows its members practising on human silhouette targets, frowned upon by the vast majority of shooters in New Zealand.
In comments to CNN, the owner of the hotel said Tarrant was polite and did not notice anything out of the ordinary.
That’s a load of bollocks, he knew very well he couldn’t buy the weapon of his choice in Australia so came to NZ where he knew he could, his planning started way before he came here common sense tells me!