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A woman was killed and two men seriously injured after explosions and a fire rocked a suburban dental clinic in Auckland yesterday.
Detectives cordoned off the Henderson clinic and labelled the fire - which gutted the building and killed dental assistant Misook Kim - as "suspicious".
Witnesses spoke last night of watching dentist Choonsik "Andy" Moon, who owns ToothCare West, run along the roof outside his first-floor surgery. In desperation, Moon smashed the clinic's street-facing windows to try to free Kim, his sister-in-law, mother of three children and practice nurse.
Moon and one other man suffered serious burns and severe smoke inhalation and were taken to Waitakere Hospital for treatment.
Echo McRae from Ray White Te Atatu said she and her colleagues watched Moon.
"He was panicking, and yelling in another language. There was a wooden box that he was trying to pull the lid off to smash the windows with... Another guy jumped up, and he got inside the office, but he came out straight away, all black.
"I thought I heard a woman screaming, but I couldn't tell who it was. I think she was yelling in another language."
McRae said she was surprised to see firefighters come out of the building after quenching the blaze without the woman. "I thought they would have dragged her out."
Kim's brother, who did not want to be named, last night told the Herald on Sunday he was already organising his sister's funeral and speaking to relations in Korea.
The family members who were in New Zealand were gathered at the Henderson police station, he said - he and Misook were the only two siblings and she had arrived from Korea about three years ago.
Kim's brother said she had three children, a 16-year-old daughter Sohee, Michael, aged about 14, and another girl, Hanbi, 9.
The blaze came during a normal busy morning in the Henderson shopping centre. Moon's dental surgery - one of two he owns - sits above a fashion store and a cafe on the main road through the suburb.
At 11.30am, the woman who owns the fashion store told witnesses she had heard banging and shouting upstairs, "like kids fighting", before the fire. And staff from Toast cafe on the other side of the building told the Herald on Sunday the dentist was in a state of shock when he burst in and asked to use their phone to call 111. "He was very nervous," one woman said. "He was shocked."
One witness, who did not want to be named, said about that time, he watched a man burst out on to the back roof on the carpark side of the building. "There was smoke everywhere, coming through the whole thing," he said.
Lindsay Scott was working below the Henderson surgery when he heard a commotion and rushed outside. "I came out the back, because my car's usually parked over there, to see what happened. The windows were all exploding and one man was in a real state on top of the roof," he said.
Two people, one of them believed to be the dentist, tried to get into the burning building by smashing windows with a broken chair.
"These two guys tried to get in but they couldn't because of the heavy smoke. But eventually one guy got in the closest window to the door, and he opened the door from the inside and just tumbled out," Tony Vincent told 3 News.
At the scene, Detective Senior Sergeant John Sutton said the death was being treated as suspicious but police did not know how the fire had started.
He said of the injured: "They're being treated by the doctors and nurses - until they can be spoken to we don't know [any more details]."
Sutton said there was no evidence "at this time" to link it to a recent spate of blazes in the area.
Fire officers who fought the midday fire were interviewed at the Henderson police station last night. Murray Binning, chief fire officer for Auckland, said three trucks had attended the blaze. One of his fire investigators had examined the scene.
The dentist's office manager, Rosemary Henshall, who had worked there for six years, was shocked to hear of the drama at her workplace.
"The boss, he is a lovely family friendly guy. A genuine nice guy.
"We are all really cut up. I've been to see him in hospital and the guy is just a mess."
Quizzed last night by police, she said questioning focused on relationships in the office. However, she said she was unable to offer a view as her colleagues always spoke Korean.
Dentist Lisa Fernandes, who had worked with Moon for three years, said Moon always worked Saturdays, from about 8am until 7pm, but support staff changed each week.
Moon owns the Henderson clinic and also Andy Moon Dental at Northcote. Choonsik Moon - commonly known as Andy - lives with his wife Yeon Jun Cho in Greenhithe, 16km from his Henderson South surgery. The couple have a $1 million home which is currently on the market.
Explosive materials
* LPG cylinders kept in dental surgeries for laboratory work could have fuelled the fire in Henderson yesterday.
* Dental surgeon Lindsay Acker, a member of the New Zealand Dental Association, said the gas cylinders were used for melting wax when making dentures.
* Acker said small hand-held butane gas cylinders, were also used by dentists, but these were the size of a torch, and contained only a small amount of gas.
* David Stallworthy, a Whangarei dentist with more than 20 years' experience, said oxygen bottles were also kept in surgeries for emergency medical situations.
- additional reporting by Jonathan Marshall, Michelle Coursey and Rebecca Lewis
