New Zealand shooting: Police visited terror-accused Brenton Tarrant’s home in Dunedin before granting him gun licence
- Police in October 2017 interviewed terror-accused Brenton Tarrant at his home in Dunedin, a city about a five-hour drive from Christchurch
- They inspected his house and spoke to two of his referees, before granting him the gun licence which allowed him to buy the weapons used in the mosque attacks
Brenton Tarrant, an Australian white supremacist, applied for the gun licence in September 2017 and a police “firearms vetting team” visited his Dunedin home a month later, a police spokesman said.
“One of the steps to gaining a firearms licence is a home visit to meet the applicant in person and inspect the security of their property,” he said in a statement.
The police team interviewed Tarrant in October 2017 and carried out a “security inspection” of his home, he said.
Tarrant also provided the names of two New Zealand residents as references, who were also interviewed by police and “met the requirements of the process”, he said, without identifying the two persons. “Following this, all the available information was reviewed and the licence was approved in November 2017.”