Source: New Zealand Police
Christchurch Police have recovered firearms, knives, batons and hatchets from an allegedly stolen vehicle, and filed a raft of charges against the self-proclaimed victim.
The 36-year-old Burwood man now has a date with the courts following the convoluted incident, which allegedly played out early Tuesday morning.
About 5.30am, the man rang Police to report that he’d been threatened by an armed assailant who stole his Volkswagen. The attending officers found the man on Chichester Street, where he relayed an intricate chain of events that allegedly began to unfold an hour earlier.
He told officers of being ordered to drive to several locations at gunpoint, swap keys for a BMW, and of then using that car to track his supposedly stolen Volkswagen to Davis Street, where he found it locked and abandoned.
As officers tried to make sense of the story, they gave the 36-year-old a lift back to his home to pick up the spare car keys. Once the Volkswagen was unlocked, officers invoked the Search and Surveillance Act to check the offender hadn’t left his firearm in the car.
At that point, the threads of the man’s story began to unravel.
Inside the Volkswagen, Police found a methamphetamine pipe, a bag of white crystals, a shotgun concealed in a bag, a pistol, one round of ammunition and an assortment of knives, batons and hatchets. Police seized the items and arrested the man.
He has been charged with making a false statement; unlawful possession of a firearm; unlawfully carrying an imitation firearm; unlawful possession of a pistol, unlawful possession of ammunition; possession of utensils; possession of an offensive weapon and failing to carry out obligations in relation to a computer search.
The man has been remanded in custody and is due to appear in the Christchurch District Court on 12 November.
ENDS
Issued by the Police Media Centre
