SYDNEY (REUTERS) - New Zealand suffered its worst peacetime shooting as at least one gunman, a suspected white supremacist, killed 49 people during Friday prayers at two mosques in Christchurch, the largest city on South Island.
Violent crime is rare in New Zealand and police do not usually carry guns, though mass shootings have occurred previously. Here is a list of some previous incidents.
- 1997: A lone shooter killed six people, including his father, and wounded four others in the ski-lodge hamlet of Raurimu. He was tried and found not guilty by reason of insanity.
- 1994: Seven members of the Bain family were shot dead in Dunedin, South Island's second-largest city. A surviving son was convicted of their murders in 1995, but later acquitted at a retrial in 2009 and awarded a payout of almost NZ$1 million (S$925,280.06).
- 1992: At a farm outside Auckland, Brian Schlaepfer shot and stabbed six members of his own family before killing himself with a shotgun.
- 1990: A gun-mad loner killed 13 men, women and children in a 24-hour rampage in the tiny seaside village of Aramoana. He was killed by police. It prompted a modest tightening of gun laws.
- 1943: Forty-eight prisoners-of-war and a guard died when officers opened fire on rioting inmates at a camp holding Japanese soldiers captured during the Guadalcanal Campaign. A court martial determined prisoners were responsible, but no charges were pressed.
