| Raurimu massacre | |
|---|---|
  Raurimu Raurimu (New Zealand) | |
| Location | Raurimu, Manawatū-Whanganui, New Zealand |
| Date | 8 February 1997 |
| Weapons | Single-shot shotgun |
| Deaths | 6 |
| Injured | 4 |
| Perpetrator | Stephen Lawrence Anderson |
| Verdict | Found not guilty by reason of insanity |
The Raurimu massacre was a mass shooting that took place in 1997 in Raurimu, New Zealand. Stephen Anderson killed six people and wounded four. The massacre was one of the five most deadly mass shootings in the country's history. [1]
 | This section includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(June 2023) |
On 8 February 1997, at a ski lodge in Raurimu, the Anderson family sat down to breakfast with guests. There were 11 people at the table then. Stephen Anderson stood in the dining room door and said, "I had sex with a dog," and after a pause, "And with a cat." His mother told him to wash up and return for breakfast. A few minutes later, he returned with a single-shot shotgun and a cartridge in his teeth. His father got up from the table, asked what he was doing and tried to take a shotgun from him. He told his father that he was the incarnate devil. Stephen Anderson shot him in the chest and killed him. Everyone started running in different directions, Anderson continued to shoot and chase people. He shot at people in and near the ski lodge. He was chased by police in a helicopter and detained naked near the scene. Anderson killed his father, four guests, a neighbour and injured four. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Stephen Lawrence Anderson was 24 at the time of the shooting; he lived in Wellington and was unemployed. He was a dental student. In 1995 he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He did not take the medication prescribed to him and was a regular cannabis user. Anderson was under the care of the Capital & Coast District Health Board's community mental health team. Two years before the shooting, he was arrested for hooliganism and his gun licence was revoked by police. Police also tried to revoke his father's gun licence. [3] [5] [7]
In February 1997, he was charged with six counts of murder and attempted murder of eight people. In December 1997 he was tried in the High Court at Hamilton. The hearing lasted eight days. The jury found him "not guilty by reason of insanity" on all charges and he was detained indefinitely at a forensic mental health unit at Porirua Hospital. [4] [8]
In 2008 he wrote a collection of 36 poems called Toys in the Attic. [9] [10] [11] [8]
As of July 2009, he was released from a psychiatric hospital and lived in Clouston Park. [12] The next year, he expressed remorse for his actions in an interview with North & South magazine, writing that "My mind was labouring under a psychosis that convinced me the future of the world was at stake and my failure to act would most likely meet with a most dire outcome for all sentient beings." [1]
In May 2011, he gave an interview to Sunday News , in which he said that he had been successfully reintegrated into society due to his adoption of meditation, saying that Buddhist teachings had significantly helped aid him. [9]
In July 2011, he was recalled to a mental hospital for cannabis use. [13] [7] [14] [15]
In November 2014, it was revealed that he was a teacher at Inverlochy Art School in Wellington. An advertisement for his jewellery was also found on the Trade Me website. [16] [17]
In May 2023, he published a book The Devil's Haircut. [18] [19]
At the time of the shooting, an Independent Review of Firearms Control was being undertaken by retired judge Thomas Thorp. Thorp was due to report by 28 February 1997, but this was later extended to 30 June, and his report includes this mass killing. [20] In this case, Thorp noted the revocation of the firearms licence, psychiatric history and single-shot shotgun being used, but did not analyse the case further, as the case was awaiting trial. [20]
A school shooting is an armed attack at an educational institution, such as a primary school, secondary school, high school or university, involving the use of a firearm. Many school shootings are also categorized as mass shootings due to multiple casualties. The phenomenon is most widespread in the United States, which has the highest number of school-related shootings, although school shootings take place elsewhere in the world. Especially in the United States, school shootings have sparked a political debate over gun violence, zero tolerance policies, gun rights and gun control.
The Hungerford massacre was a spree shooting in Wiltshire and Berkshire, United Kingdom, which occurred on 19 August 1987 when 27-year-old Michael Ryan shot and killed sixteen people, including an unarmed police officer and his own mother, before killing himself. No firm motive for the killings has been established.
Martin John Bryant is an Australian mass murderer who shot and killed thirty-five people and injured twenty-three others in the Port Arthur massacre on 28 and 29 April 1996. He is currently serving thirty-five life sentences, and 135 years without the possibility of parole, at Risdon Prison in Hobart, Tasmania.
The Aramoana massacre was a mass shooting that occurred on 13 November 1990 in the small seaside township of Aramoana, northeast of Dunedin, New Zealand. Resident David Gray killed 13 people, including local police Sergeant Stewart Guthrie, one of the first responders to the reports of a shooting, after a verbal dispute between Gray and his next-door neighbour. After a careful house-to-house search the next day, police officers led by the Anti-Terrorist Squad located Gray, and shot and injured him as he came out of a house firing from the hip. He died in an ambulance while being transported to hospital.
The San Ysidro McDonald's massacre was a mass murder, which occurred at a McDonald's restaurant in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego, California, on July 18, 1984. The perpetrator, 41-year-old James Huberty, fatally shot 21 people and wounded 19 others before being killed by a police sniper approximately 77 minutes after he had first opened fire.
The Dawson College shooting occurred on September 13, 2006, at Dawson College, a CEGEP located in downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The perpetrator, Kimveer Singh Gill, began shooting outside the de Maisonneuve Boulevard entrance to the school, and moved towards the atrium by the cafeteria on the main floor. One victim died at the scene, while another 19 were injured, eight of whom were listed in critical condition, with six requiring surgery. The shooter later committed suicide, after being shot in the arm by a police officer. It was the third fatal school shooting in Montreal, after the École Polytechnique massacre in 1989 and the shooting spree at Concordia University in 1992.
The California State University, Fullerton, massacre was a mass shooting committed by a custodian, Edward Charles Allaway, on July 12, 1976, at California State University, Fullerton, in Fullerton, California, United States. Seven people were killed as a result. It was the deadliest act of mass murder in Orange County until the 2011 Seal Beach shooting, in which eight people died.
Cho Seung-hui, anglicized as Seung-Hui Cho, was a South Korean mass murderer who was responsible for the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007. Cho killed 32 people and wounded 17 others with two semi-automatic pistols on April 16, 2007, at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. This killing is the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, and was at the time the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. A senior-level undergraduate student of creative writing at the university, Cho died by suicide after police breached the doors of Virginia Tech's Norris Hall which Cho had locked with heavy chains, where most of the shooting had taken place.
The gun laws of New Zealand are contained in the Arms Act 1983 statute, which includes multiple amendments including those that were passed subsequent to the 1990 Aramoana massacre and the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings.
The Collier Township shooting, also referred to as the Bridgeville LA Fitness shooting, was a mass shooting and murder-suicide that took place on August 4, 2009, in an LA Fitness health club in Collier Township, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The attack resulted in four deaths, including the perpetrator, George Sodini, who killed himself. Nine other people were injured. The fitness center is approximately 10 miles (16 km) south of Pittsburgh, in the Great Southern Shopping Center, a strip mall located in the Kirwan Heights section of Collier Township, just outside of the borough of Bridgeville.
The Cumbria shootings were a shooting spree that occurred on 2 June 2010 when a lone gunman, taxi driver Derrick Bird, killed twelve people and injured eleven others in Cumbria, England, United Kingdom. Along with the 1987 Hungerford massacre and the 1996 Dunblane school massacre, it is one of the worst criminal acts involving firearms in British history. The shootings ended when Bird killed himself in a wooded area after abandoning his car in the village of Boot.
The Monkseaton shootings occurred on 30 April 1989 in Monkseaton, Tyne & Wear, England, when Robert Sartin killed one man and left 16 other people injured during a 20-minute shooting spree.
A mass shooting is a violent crime in which one or more attackers use a firearm to kill or injure multiple individuals in rapid succession. There is no widely accepted specific definition, and different organizations tracking such incidents use different criteria. Mass shootings are generally characterized by the targeting of victims in a non-combat setting, and thus the term generally excludes gang violence, shootouts and warfare. Mass shootings may be done for personal or psychological reasons, such as by individuals who are deeply disgruntled, seeking notoriety, or are intensely angry at a perceived grievance; though they have also been used as a terrorist tactic, such as when members of an ethnic or religious minority are targeted. The perpetrator of an ongoing mass shooting may be referred to as an active shooter.
Stephen Craig Paddock was an American mass murderer who perpetrated the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. Paddock opened fire into a crowd of about 22,000 concertgoers attending a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip, killing 60 people and injuring approximately 867. Paddock killed himself in his hotel room following the shooting. The incident is the deadliest mass shooting by a lone shooter in United States history. Paddock's motive remains officially undetermined, and the possible factors are the subject of speculation.
On November 5, 2017, Devin Kelley shot and killed 26 people and wounded 22 others at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Kelley was subsequently shot and wounded, then killed himself. It is the deadliest mass shooting in Texas history and the deadliest at an American place of worship, surpassing the Charleston church shooting of 2015.
On April 18 and 19, 2020, 51-year-old Gabriel Wortman committed multiple shootings and set fires at sixteen locations in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, killing twenty-two people and injuring three others before he was shot and killed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in the community of Enfield. The attacks are the deadliest shooting rampage in Canadian history, exceeding the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal, where fourteen women were killed.
On March 22, 2021, a mass shooting occurred at a King Soopers supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Ten people were killed, including a local on-duty police officer. The shooter, 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa, was arrested after being shot in the right leg. He was temporarily hospitalized before being moved to the county jail. After undergoing mental evaluations during the legal proceedings, Al-Issa was found mentally incompetent to stand trial in December 2021 and in April 2022. On August 23, 2023, prosecutors announced that Al-Issa was mentally competent to stand trial; a judge ruled as such on October 6 of that same year. On September 23, 2024, Al-Issa was found guilty in the shooting and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
On April 15, 2021, a mass shooting occurred at a FedEx Ground facility in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. Nine people were killed, including the gunman, 19-year-old former employee Brandon Scott Hole, who committed suicide. Seven others were injured, including four by gunfire. It is the deadliest workplace shooting in the history of Indiana.
On 12 August 2021, a mass shooting occurred in Keyham, Plymouth, England. The gunman, 22-year-old Jake Davison from Plymouth, shot and killed five people, including his mother and a 3-year-old girl. Davison also injured two others before fatally shooting himself. The inquest jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing of all of the victims.
On 20 May 1992, 64-year-old Brian Schlaepfer murdered six members of his family on their Paerata farm, near Pukekohe, Auckland Region, New Zealand before he shot himself. The massacre was one of the most high-profile shootings in New Zealand's history.