A karakia has been held this morning in remembrance of the CBD shooting.
The high-rise downtown Auckland construction site where a mass shooter ran riot on workers claiming two lives and injuring a further 10 has been reopened after an official blessing this morning.
Representatives from local iwi Ngāti Whātu Ōrākei held a karakia at 6.45am and a minute’s silence took place at 7am to remember the two men who lost their lives in last Thursday’s tragedy.
They were joined by other dignitaries including Mayor Wayne Brown and workers from the site caught up in the shooting.
Construction workers at today's official blessing a week after two construction workers were killed in a mass shooting at One Queen Street. Photo / Michael Craig
It has been a week since gunman Matu Reid, 24, entered the One Queen St site armed with a pump action shotgun and killed two workers, Solomona To’oto’o, 45, of Manurewa and Tupuga Sipiliano, 44, of Wattle Downs.
Construction workers together at the top of the Deloitte building on Auckland CBD during Thursday's shooting. Photo / Hayden Woodward
Police are still trying to piece together what triggered Reid’s deadly rampage against his two workmates.
Last week an eyewitness told the Herald Reid seemed to know what he was doing and who he was looking for.
He recounted the five minutes of madness that unfolded at One Queen Street in the Deloitte tower just after work started and the chilling words Reid was yelled during his deadly rampage.
“I can remember him yelling ‘So what you going to do to me now ... what can you do’,” the worker, who had only been working at that construction site for less than a month, told the Herald.
“I don’t know, but the two people he shot, [it] was like he wanted to kill those two people. I feel like he was too angry because he was yelling out to people; because when he came to my room, he left slow, and he could have shot randomly if he was looking for someone.
“The way he was yelling was like he came with a purpose. It all happened within five minutes.”
Auckland CBD gunman Matu Reid, who died in a shoot out with police after killing two construction workers at the One Queen Street site.
On the day of the shooting Acting Superintendent Sunny Patel had said the gunman entered the construction site at 7.22am.
“The offender has moved through the building site and continued to discharge his firearm. Upon reaching the upper levels of the building, the male has contained himself within the elevator shaft and our staff have attempted to engage with him.
“Further shots were fired from the male and he was located deceased a short time later.”
The Flatbush man was sentenced to five months’ home detention on March 2021 for a violent assault where he struck and strangled a woman, breaking a bone in her neck. That attack was carried out while he was serving a sentence of supervision following an earlier assault.
