Police to students: Help us find the bridge killer

Otahuhu College principal Gil Laurenson (left) looks on as Constable Bryan Ward asks students to help find the killer of Chris Currie. Picture / Brett Phibbs

The person who killed Chris Currie possibly wears a school uniform - or is not long out of one - so police are enlisting students to help flush out the killer.

First stop yesterday was Otahuhu College's Year 11 geography class. (McAuley High School, Otahuhu Intermediate and De La Salle College in Mangere East will follow.)

Constables Bryan Ward and Matt Goodman are well known at Otahuhu College - they coach the champion girls 1st XV.

The 20-odd students stare as they clock the television cameras following Mr Ward into the room.

"Too late to get a haircut now," he joshes.

But the serious face goes on as he sticks the laminated front page of yesterday's Herald on the whiteboard. "Put your pens down and listen," he says. "It's about somebody dying ... Can I ask you a favour, all right? Start asking around. Start finding out who done it."

During the few minutes Mr Ward speaks, one student stands out for his smirk and whatever he is scribbling on a piece of paper.

As Mr Ward wraps up, the student flashes the paper, bearing his name, towards the cameras.

Mr Ward catches the gesture and irritably addresses the student by name. "This is going out to all the national newspapers and television, okay? And all it does is make the school look stupid. Think about what's gone on."

The problem, says teacher Peter Thompson, is that "kids in general watch too many movies where there seem to be no consequences, where things aren't real ... "

He is not talking about his show-off student.

Outside the college's imposing main building, student Lorna Williams, 18, widens her eyes when you suggest the culprit could be someone she knows.

"I would feel shocked and pretty angry. It's just wrong."

At 1.10pm, the constables are back at Otahuhu for an assembly of 700 senior students. Principal Gil Laurenson encounters little fidgeting.

"I know we can all sympathise with the family," he says, pausing often to let the words sink in, "and we are going to treat this with the seriousness it deserves.

"All of us need to think about the consequences of the things that we do ... and on Friday night we got the worst possible outcome."

Mr Ward talks about Chris Currie: how he would drive sloshed friends safely home; how he coached his old high school's rugby team.

The tone hardens: "The longer it goes on and the more we have to track down people, the worse the consequences are going to be."

STRING OF INCIDENTS REPORTED

Around 30 police are working on the case, which has generated numerous calls about other, similar events in recent months.

Detective Senior Sergeant Neil Grimstone said the calls had come in from throughout Auckland about problems on various overbridges.

"This has obviously brought it to the fore and perhaps highlighted a problem we have with people doing this sort of idiotic behaviour," said Mr Grimstone. "Clearly by throwing an 8kg piece of concrete you are upping the ante. We haven't had anything as serious as that [before]."

Mr Grimstone urged the person responsible to come forward before police found them as it would possibly help further down the track.

He said fingerprints had been lifted from the overbridge but not been matched to anything in the police system.

Samples were being taken from the concrete and police hoped they would find DNA which could lead to the culprit. This had been done successfully in the UK recently and led to an arrest in a similar incident.

Police have also studied tags on the overbridge handrail.

* Anyone with information, phone: 0800 CHRIS5 / 0800 247-475