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Tight security surrounded the appearance of a man in Auckland District Court this morning following an dramatic armed stand-off in the city yesterday.
The 35-year-old Auckland cabinet maker faced three charges of kidnapping and one each of unlawfully taking a motor vehicle and failing to stop and reckless driving.
The charges related to an incident in which when three employees of a panel beating business were held hostage by a gunman in a three hour stand-off in suburban New Lynn.
Judge Nicola Mathers granted the man interim name suppression and remanded him in custody until July 18.
After undergoing a psychiatric assessment the man appeared in the dock wearing a blue prison jumpsuit and was handcuffed behind his back and surrounded by prison officers.
Security was tight, six police officers guarded the man and the door to the court, after he broke a safety window in the police cell this morning while waiting to appear.
One of the three men taken hostage earlier told how he faked having a full bladder before making a dash to safety.
Peter Pardesi, 53, and brothers Ron and Rom Kumar, 19 and 17 respectively, watched as the man allegedly held the gun to his head, saying he would not leave the building alive.
Mr Pardesi, who has owned the Stock St business for about a month, said he was setting up cars to repair for the day when a small man in an orange vest ran into the workshop armed with a pistol.
"Then we saw about 15 or 20 cops. They were chasing him," he said.
"The police were telling him to come out with his arms up and he wasn't going to, so we went upstairs more or less.
"It happened so quickly. I wasn't that worried at the start but I did get a little bit worried later on.
"He was saying [to police]: 'If you guys are going to kill me I'm going to shoot myself. I'm not going to get out of here alive'. The police were talking to him. He made us sit down and not to talk to anybody and more or less he was in control so we didn't say nothing. I was trying to keep the guys cool.
"And then he was putting the gun up to his head."
Mr Pardesi said the gunman spoke to police out of the window from the mezzanine kitchen area upstairs before leading the trio downstairs to another room so he could not be seen.
"He didn't touch any of us but in the last, probably, 10 to 15 minutes I was pretty scared."
The man demanded they swap jackets. "He made out he was one of the workers.
"I told him: 'I'm busting. I want to go to the toilet'. I could tell it was getting to the crunch time where he wanted to do something. I went over to the toilet and saw the storeroom door was open about a quarter and I knew that if I could make the escape now, this would be the right time."
Mr Pardesi ran for the door, towards waiting police. Minutes later, about 11am, one loud explosion followed by at least three smaller ones could be heard echoing around the industrial neighbourhood, followed by a tense silence.
Armed police had swarmed into the area from the intersection of Great North and Portage Rds, then uniformed and plainclothes officers ran towards the blast site as two ambulances arrived.
The explosions are believed to have been stun grenades used in armed offender squad emergencies.
Police have confirmed that no shots were fired and no one was injured.
Mr Pardesi said the explosions left dents in some of the cars he was panelbeating and he was not yet sure who would cover the cost.
"I'm not sure who's going to pay. We've been through enough."
Mr Pardesi and the Kumar brothers were relieved the incident was over but were remarkably upbeat about what happened. They wanted to celebrate surviving with a beer but said it would be business as usual.
Ron Kumar said: "We're feeling much better now, feeling good, still recovering. It's going to take a while."
The hostage saga started in Mt Roskill at 7.46am when a strategic traffic unit officer tried to stop a stolen Hyundai Santa Fe.
The driver led the policeman on a low-speed chase through Blockhouse Bay and Avondale and into New Lynn, where the man parked the car backwards on a carpark kerb with a flat front passenger tyre.
The gunman allegedly pointed the pistol at the officer before running off on foot down Portage Rd to Great North Rd, where he was fended off by Ross Ongley, who had come out to investigate why the police helicopter was hovering overhead.
"I see this guy in an orange vest coming down and then I walked out," Mr Ongley said.
"Next thing I realise he's got a gun to his head. It was like something out of a movie.
"He's telling me to get inside the building and close the door and I said, 'Piss off'.
"We did a couple of pirouettes together ... I felt like I was dancing with him. Afterwards, only afterwards, did my heart start racing.
"His eyes were as big as saucers. I don't know whether he was on something."
Another witness, Mark Dunasement, saw the gunman run past the window of his office.
He could hear police negotiating with the gunman, whom they were calling "Bruno".
"After the explosion I heard a blood-curdling scream from this Bruno character, then after that it just went silent.
"Cops were running all over the place and dogs were barking. That was it. All over."
Terry Bushell, who owns the New Lynn Automotive building, said he was working upstairs when he heard the police helicopter.
"I looked down and there's these cops in the door with a gun ... snipers up on the roof and all sorts of things."
Police officers were seen loading a weapon with large canisters before the explosions.
Businesses were evacuated and cordons placed for several blocks.
More than 22 police cars lined Great North Rd, where police set up a command point and more were placed at surrounding intersections.
The police helicopter circled the area for most of the three hours that the incident took to play out.
- Additional reporting NZPA
