Editorial: Tragedies hurt whole community

Police at the scene in SH2, Main Rd, Clive, where a man was shot and injured after a woman was killed.

It is always sad when someone dies in violent or tragic circumstances.

Everyone hopes to live a long, happy life, passing away peacefully in one's sleep. So when a young life is cut short it is a tragedy.

Obviously family and friends are the people most affected because losing a loved one in any form is difficult at any time, magnified when it is by unnatural means.

However, in a sense, a violent death also affects the community as a whole. This is certainly the case in Hawke's Bay this week.

Many residents woke up yesterday to the news a woman had been found dead in a Westshore house and that a man had been injured in a shootout with police in Clive.

Police investigations have been continuing and the details of exactly what happened are still to be determined, so we cannot even begin to speculate.

Having said that, the police and Armed Offenders Squad would have had a tough task to deal with late last night.

After establishing that a woman was dead, police faced a situation where the public was at risk.

They had to move quickly and while the full details of what happened in Clive need to be established, thankfully no members of the public were harmed in what sounds like a fiery confrontation in which a man shot at police before being injured.

These incidents are never good for any community and hopefully police and our justice system can quickly establish what happened and punish whoever was responsible.

But for now, our condolences go to the family for their loss.