"You're always going to get pieces of shit wherever you are…"
A twenty-three-year-old New Zealand man has been arrested in the carpark shooting of an Australian surfer a dozen or so clicks out of Raglan, the country’s most celebrated wave.
The surfer, Sean McKinnon, who was thirty-three and from Port Campbell in Victoria, home to one of Australia’s best big waves, was in a camper-van with his girl, Bianca Buckley, early on Friday morning when a man demanded the keys to the van.
Sean got shot.
Bianca escaped.
Gunman drove off with the mortally wounded Mckinnon still in the back.
From Australia’s national broadcaster,
His partner, described as being “very shocked and distressed”, managed to escape the gunman and alerted the police.
“At approximately 3:20am, police were notified that an offender had approached a van and shots were fired,” Detective Inspector Graham Pitkethley said.
At approximately 8:00am this morning, police located the van with the man’s body inside.”
Police said they found the van with the body inside some 80 kilometres away.
“Inquiries indicate that this was a random attack,” Detective Inspector Pitkethley said.
The suspected gunman was arrested after police raided a property at Tauhei on the outskirts of Hamilton late on Friday night.
He appeared in Hamilton District Court this morning charged with murder, aggravated robbery, threatening to kill and driving disqualified.
His identity was suppressed and he was remanded in custody to face another hearing in the country’s High Court on August 27.
I did a little ring-around pals in Raglan, population five thousand or so, and as, one said, “The police said it’s a local guy to the region so it’ll be interesting to see who it is. You wouldn’t imagine this happening here but then, you’re always going to get pieces of shit wherever you are. And there’s shitloads of people in campers around here. Pretty spooky for ’em.”
On Facebook, the Victorian surfer Glen Casey, another man noted for his love of big cold-water waves, wrote, “Seany you showed us how to live life to the fullest and charge as hard as anyone on the big days.! You touched us all with your kind heart and beautiful mind. See you on the other side dear friend.”
I’m so glad they included the driving offence in his list of charges. It really bugs me when murderers get away with driving without a licence.
Sounds like Meth: random, out of your mind violence, perpetrated on second class citizens: tourists, a prime target for Meth heads. Seems like the boy panicked and shot the surfer. Meth devastaed a generation on the Big Island of Hawaii, and the last big drug bust I remember: ranchers were shipping hundreds of pounds of meth into Hawaii on empty cattle boats coming from California. They got busted by the Feds and got ridiculously good deals (7-8 years and no forfeiture: they got to keep their 50 acre, and 1000 acre ranches); senators and politicians publicly lobbyied for short prison terms because they were vital to the cattle industry. Disgusting. Just like guns, Meth, oxycotin, and illegal immigration: the big guys make lots of money, are protected by the “legitimate” system, and they could give a shit about the collatoral damage. The last slave brought to America from Africa said that when he was taken by a neighboring tribe, and handed over to the illegal slave traders, he realized that greed knows no boundaries (something like that). Very sad to hear about this young surfer’s death.
Too many stupid people will always be tryin’ to get higher, higher, higher then they did before…
I hope they all kill them~selves, gettin’ high, like my bio~dad did, instead of killin’ some~one else,
for it was their choice to choose hard drugs.F**kin’ kooks…
…yeah, 90’s I got in with the wrong PB Point/La Jolla guys, coke fienders headed for the cheaper meth. Lotta guys couldnt escape the grip.
RIP to the innocents like Sean.
Well said. The NZ I grew up in never had issues like this. I wonder if he had a P addiction. Thats the NZ version of ice. Sadly there is lots of issues with that these days.
Crank? It’s everywhere. The devil’s WD-40.
Man. What a weird life and world. Really sad way to go. Would never expect that to happen in a place like NZ. Sounds like a story from Mex….but then you go to Mex and it feels safe and the people are generally great and it’s not at all as the picture paints it. Sad for everyone.
really dark and sad eh? man……
A brother has been murdered… And you come out with misinformed and frankly bullshit tripe about it?!?
This tragedy aside, we’ve had the conversation on messenger already about Skindog.
Not once in Derek’s 50 or so words on the subject was Skindog ”bagged” so I really don’t know what the fuck you’re on about.
Self indulgent nonsense yet again Mara.
You know what was super-gnarly? Tonight I was driving home from the Single Fin comp (Binnsey was in fine form, as is per norm). I hit the Bypass and there is an utter massacre. The scene is so strewn that I have a hard time understanding exactly what took place. I slow to see if I can help: you know, those self-indulgent tendencies and a lot of WSI training. I couldn’t see where I could lend a hand as all appeared said and done. I had a Swiss friend in the car. “Geezus…” she said.
“Yeah…” The bodies were covered with whatever was available. I thought of the children, the parents, the wives and husbands whose lives will change forever in the next 30 minutes. No one will ever write about them, however, so those thoughts were just more self-indulgence.
At least your thoughts showed compassion and a level of consideration.
I wish we could say the same for your deleted comment…
You deleted it, not me.
All drug related crime – from HAW to ZA to NZ – stop the damn cartels from the east.
One of the few occasions where the customary headline exclamation mark feels a bit off I reckon.
random tweaker?
drunk?
doesn’t seem to make sense.
RIP, nightmare for the fiancé and family.
I remember meeting the guy quite clearly because he stood out from other carpark dorks & shit spinners. Small waves that day but he was ripping, if we didn’t talk his surfing would have stood out in my mental catalogue of “randoms who I wish I could surf like”. Not a compy style, surfing for the sake of enjoying the wave. It was sick. RIP
Real sad news. I hope the dickhead responsible for this gets a very stiff sentence.
I hope Sean’s family and friends find some solace in the fact that the killer was arrested. And that this never happens again.
Stiff sentence or not, it will though.
Its such a shit situation, some idiot with a gun taking someones life in their prime and ruining a bunch of other lives (including his own).
I know. And for no reason at all.
I feel so sorry for his poor family.