The killing of two women and injuring of a man in Northland looks like a tragic and sad mix of mental illness and firearms.
It was known that the murderer was a frequent user of firearms.
It seems to have been known that he suffered from mental illness and depression, and he had a record of violence.
He didn’t have a firearms license but had somehow acquired a lot of weapons.
RNZ: Gunman had multiple weapons – reports
Police are refusing to discuss how a convicted criminal who shot two women was able to collect firearms without a licence.
Quinn Patterson killed property manager Wendy Campbell, 60, and her 37-year-old daughter Natanya on Wednesday morning when they visited his home with a contractor to install smoke alarms. The contractor was also shot, but managed to escape and raise the alarm.
There are reports that Patterson, aged in his 50s, had multiple guns and other weapons, including grenades and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
Police have confirmed he did not have a firearms licence.
He served 18 months in prison for stabbing a police officer multiple times with a 33cm hunting knife in Hamilton in 1983.
Patterson’s only sister, Gloria, says her brother’s mental and physical health deteriorated rapidly this year and she had urged him to seek help.
NZ Herald: Northland shooting: A portrait of killer Quinn Patterson
Friend Leah Cameron said Quinn’s father brought his children up with a “Doomsday” mentality.
“He was fatalistic about the world, that it was not a good place. He could have been classed as being a bit of a fanatic”.
He made his children dig graves with him and he and his wife apparently wrote a book about UFOs.
Patterson liked guns despite friends saying he did not have a licence and was not a hunter. Neighbours would often hear him shooting in his backyard.
“He just shot in his back lawn by the sounds of it, you could hear it from here, you could hear it from everywhere,” Walters said.
“They were big guns. we’re talking automatics, semi-automatics, big calibres. They sounded like cannons, you could hear them going off with, like, 16 rounds.
“He was just sort of a law unto his own.”
He became paranoid and started to accumulate several weapons. A friend told Newshub he had grenades, shotguns, rifles and hand guns. He had “barricaded” himself in the property with bars on the windows.
He was becoming more and more depressed and paranoid, friends said.
He had taken several types of medication over the years, including sleeping tablets and had tried natural medication, vitamins and exercise in an attempt to get better.
There are some obvious questions that need to be asked about all this.
