Editorial: Day Napier suffered the unthinkable

Napier Police pictured during a short ceremony staged as a memorial to Senior Constable Len Snee who died in the Chaucer Road siege exactly 5 years ago. Photo / Glenn Taylor

Half an hour before deadline on Thursday, May 7, 2009, our front-page lead was locked in, with the headline: "Ambulance base taking off".

That was before a volley of fatal shots was fired on Chaucer Rd, Napier.

"Officer shot dead" was the eventual headline.

At 9.30am, six years ago today, Jan Molenaar inexplicably gunned down Senior Constable Len Snee.

Back then we were an afternoon newspaper and, for any frontline journalist, stories didn't get any bigger than this.

Thing is, my wife was heavily pregnant. So, not wanting to miss the natal hour, I was on "light duties" - phone work only.

All our reporters, bar me, gapped it to Napier, knowing deadline had already passed.

Professional dilemmas arose in the rush of the next hour. One of our reporters spent the first hour caught inside the Chaucer Rd cordon. Texting us, hiding behind someone's house, the question was how close could he get, how far do we push it?

We could hear police on the scene cursing the overhead media helicopters.

But the most vexing ethical predicament came later, when we stumbled across Molenaar's cellphone number. Do we ring it? This was probably the hardest professional question I've ever had to ask. Ultimately, we decided against it.

My daughter was born on May 12. We were in the maternity wing the following day when a huge police presence arrived at the hospital, presumably to escort a seriously wounded Senior Constable Grant Diver to his colleague's funeral.

With my baby daughter in my arms, watching police wend their way from the hospital grounds, it was a poignant juncture of death - and life.