A person struck in a hit-and-run after an altercation in West Auckland’s Glen Eden this afternoon has died, police have confirmed.
A hunt is underway to track down the vehicle involved.
Detective Inspector Tim Williams said inquiries were still in the very early stages of establishing what exactly occurred.
The area surrounding Glenmall in Glen Eden has been cordoned off as armed police, ambulance and fire trucks respond to the hit-and-run.
People have gathered near a white Ford SUV inside the police cordon.
A witness described the terrifying moment a driver pulled out a handgun and held it out a car window while fleeing the scene.
Kat McCormick was pulling out of a car park with her daughter when she saw a man in a black Holden pull a hand-brake turn near the Glenmall intersection.
“We knew he was gone,” she said.
“He flew into his windshield ... It killed him.”
She then recorded the man’s licence plate and followed his car when he did not stop.
The driver then waved a handgun out the window, and sped away.
“He pulled it out the side of his door.”
The firearm was a black handgun, McCormick said.
The driver of the Holden was described as a young white man in his early 20s.
He had a woman passenger with reddish copper hair, she said.
Garrett Raven-Wells from the bookshop said he saw someone being hit by a car across the road.
“The person was just in the middle of the road. The car driver purposefully turned around and struck him down.”
About half an hour after the crash, the police Eagle helicopter could be seen hovering over Glendene and Henderson further west.
A man who was in the Glen Eden library near the scene of the fatal hit-and-run said he saw an altercation in the library before the incident.
Toby O’Donnell said he saw a man and a woman fighting just before the hit-and-run.
“They were yelling and screaming at each other.”
Armed police remain at the cordon as crying witnesses console each other at the edge of the cordon.
A bakery worker said he did not see anything but a customer came into his shop and told him there was a fight happening around the corner.
“Then I heard an accident happened. There’s police and ambulance outside.”
Another local worker told the Herald they saw a car race through a red light from Glendale Rd to West Coast Rd after the incident.
Three of the whales succumbed on the shore.