Aramoana

Aramoana is a small coastal settlement, 27 kilometres north of Dunedin city, in the South Island of New Zealand. The settlement's permanent population in 2001 Census was 261. Supplementing this are seasonal visitors from the city who occupy cribs. The name Aramoana is Maori for "pathway of the sea".

Originally founded by The Otago Harbour Board, established in the 1880s as an ideal pilot station for navigation around the mouth of the Otago Harbour, this area grew into a small farming village. In the 1950s the town became popular as a beach resort and a rural life village due to the construction of a mole, to inhibit the spread of tidal sands into the mouth of the Otago Harbour and was surveyed and amalgamated as a suburb of Port Chalmers borough.

It is the site of New Zealand's deadliest criminal shooting, which occurred on 13 and 14 November 1990.

Location and natural environment

The settlement is located on a sand dune spit at the mouth of the Otago Harbour, opposite the end of the Otago Peninsula. The main channel of the harbour is kept clear by the Aramoana mole, an artificial breakwater which extends for 1200 metres from Aramoana. The mole was originally intended to extend another 600 meters into the ocean, however due to tidal patterns and the instability of the construction, no attempt to extend beyond the current length was thought to be possible.

New Zealand

New Zealand (/njuːˈziːlənd/ new-ZEE-lənd, Māori: Aotearoa [aɔˈtɛaɾɔa]) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main landmasses – that of the North Island, or Te Ika-a-Māui, and the South Island, or Te Waipounamu – and numerous smaller islands. New Zealand is situated some 1,500 kilometres (900 mi) east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and roughly 1,000 kilometres (600 mi) south of the Pacific island areas of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. Because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans. During its long isolation, New Zealand developed a distinctive biodiversity of animal, fungal and plant life. The country's varied topography and its sharp mountain peaks, such as the Southern Alps, owe much to the tectonic uplift of land and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington, while its most populous city is Auckland.

Somewhere between 1250 and 1300 CE, Polynesians settled in the islands that were to become New Zealand, and developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, Abel Tasman, a Dutch explorer, became the first European to sight New Zealand. In 1840, representatives of the British Crown and Māori Chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, making New Zealand a British colony. Today, the majority of New Zealand's population of 4.5 million is of European descent; the indigenous Māori are the largest minority, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders. Reflecting this, New Zealand's culture is mainly derived from Māori and early British settlers, with recent broadening arising from increased immigration. The official languages are English, Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, with English predominant.

Aramoana massacre

The Aramoana massacre was a spree shooting that occurred on 13 November 1990 in the small seaside township of Aramoana, to the northeast of Dunedin, New Zealand. Resident David Gray, after a verbal dispute with his next-door neighbour, killed 13 people, including local police Sergeant Stewart Guthrie, one of the first responders to the reports of a shooting. After a careful house-by-house search the next day, police officers led by the Anti-Terrorist Squad (now known as the Special Tactics Group) located Gray and shot him dead as he came out of a house firing from the hip. It is the deadliest criminal shooting in New Zealand history.

Details

Initial incident

The massacre began on 13 November at 7:30 p.m. when Gray confronted neighbour Garry Holden about one of Holden's daughters wandering onto his property. After the confrontation, Gray went into his house, retrieved a Norinco 84S semi-automatic rifle, walked outside and shot Holden dead.

Nearby were three young girls: Holden's two daughters, Chiquita and Jasmine, and his girlfriend Julie Ann Bryson's adopted daughter, Rewa. The girls ran into Holden's house as Gray walked onto Holden's property. He quickly found Chiquita and shot her through her left arm and chest with a Squires and Bingham .22-calibre semiautomatic sporting rifle, the bullet lodging in her abdomen.

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