Auckland CBD shooting: Detective Shaun Winstanley on recovery, and launching Firebird Energy

Shaun Winstanley, two years after the police detective was shot in the face by a gunman on a construction site in Queen St, Auckland. Photo / Michael Craig

Two years after a gunman killed two men and injured multiple others on a Queen St construction site, the Auckland detective who took a shotgun blast to the face has launched a surprising new business. Shaun Winstanley and wife Nicky speak to Kim Knight about his recovery: Seven major surgeries, their refusal to say “what if” and the story behind the Firebird brand.

Nicky Winstanley was tying her son’s shoelaces when he looked past her at the television livestream and said: “Oh, there’s a police officer covered in blood and steam.”

She grabbed the remote and switched off the screen. “School time! I’m sure they’re fine.”

Messages had been coming in all morning. Media were reporting a gunman at a downtown Auckland construction site. Was Winnie there?

Shaun “Winnie” Winstanley. Husband, father of two young boys, and a cabinetmaker turned police officer. Four years on the front line, five years as a detective and, in July 2023, a member of a tactical squad routinely dispatched to deal with armed offenders.

“I’m like ‘of course he’s there – but he’s not going to text me when he’s working’,” says Nicky. “I’d usually find out what’s happened at the same time everybody else did, after the incident is over.”

Still, the livestream wasn’t normal. Whatever was happening in the 21-storey building at the waterfront end of Queen St must have been big. And when an unknown number rang after the school drop-off, Nicky knew she had to take the call.

Shaun and Nicola "Nicky" Winstanley, at home in Auckland. The police detective, seriously injured in 2023, has launched a protein coffee business, Firebird Energy. Photo / Michael Craig

“It was like Mario Kart, we were banging off the walls, going in really quickly ... ” Shaun Winstanley is remembering the drive from Manukau.

“We’re hearing over the radio, ‘more shots fired’ ... did we know people were dead at that stage? I’m not too sure. I can’t recall. It was an ongoing, escalating situation. By the time we got there, we knew multiple people had been shot.

“We turn up, we hear gunfire, and our role is to locate, isolate and neutralise the threat. Locate, isolate and neutralise the threat. That was just running through our head.”

An Independent Police Conduct Authority report, released in May, outlines what happened that day.

Around 7.15am, Matu Reid, a contractor working at One Queen Street, enters the site with a shotgun. On the third floor, where workers are meeting, he shoots and kills two colleagues and injures several others. On the 17th floor, he wounds another worker. Around 8.05am, believing Reid is now in one of the partially constructed lift shafts on level 19, police officers on the floor below begin breaching the plywood doors covering the four shafts.

Behind the last door on the left, they unexpectedly encounter Reid. He fires two shots, hitting two officers, seriously wounding one of them. Reid fires once more. Officers fire at Reid, and one round strikes him in the forearm. He dies at the scene from what is later established to be a self-inflicted gunshot.

The two men Reid killed were Solomona To’oto’o, 45, and Tupuga Sipiliano, 44. Hato Hone St John confirmed its officers treated 10 people. Seven had gunshot wounds; one was a police officer with “significant” injuries.

Detective Shaun Winstanley had been shot in the face at close range.

“I went backwards,” the now 38-year-old remembers. “And then started looking for a bit of first aid ... I said ‘do a survey’. I was still in the zone. ‘Just do a sweep – are there any other injuries?’”

His medic mate confirms he doesn’t need a tourniquet or chest seal. Winstanley thinks he yells “cover me” as he runs towards the stairwell. Outside, faced with cameras, he instinctively raises his shirt. He doesn’t want his family to see this.

Detective Shaun Winstanley emerges from a construction site in downtown Auckland in July, 2023, with gunshot wounds to the face. Inside, an offender has killed two men and injured multiple others. Photo / Tony Johnson

Almost two years to the day later, the New Zealand Herald encounters Shaun Winstanley in the most unlikely of places.

At the 2025 Auckland Food Show, exhibitors in Row Q include a gourmet confectioner from Christchurch, a Kāpiti Coast hot sauce maker – and a tall, bearded police detective on unpaid leave selling protein-boosted coffee in a can.

“Firebird is another name for the phoenix, and this is my story of rising from the ashes,” says the laminated sheet at the Firebird Energy stand.

Winstanley is a reluctant interviewee. He agreed to speak, he says later, because of the stories people shared with him as they sampled the product he created to help his own recovery.

“People go through their own struggles. Mine was glorified. I got shot in the face and lived to tell the tale. But everybody is going through challenges.”

Winstanley has lost count of the procedures he’s had since the shooting. He guesses up to 14 of varying intensity; his surgeon confirms seven major operations. His most recent is scheduled for the Monday after the Food Show. He won’t be able to meet us immediately, he explains, because it will be a week before he can use his voice again.

In trauma care, there is a period called “the golden hour” – a critical time window in which medical intervention drastically improves your long-term chances. But survive that and you are, simply, alive. That’s when the work begins.

Nicky: “Shaun would have been forgiven for sitting on the couch and saying ‘why me’ for the rest of his life if he wanted to. He’s never once said that. We’re two years in, and he’s in daily pain, still having operations, and he just quietly gets on with it. People think, ‘Oh, you look great, you’ve come away so lucky’. They don’t realise all the internal damage. Eating any meal is a challenge. Being in pain constantly. Still not having any teeth on one side.”

Shaun: “Quick background on how we created Firebird ... I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t drink large amounts of liquid because there was a hole in my face. I couldn’t have hot stuff because of the thermal burns. But I love caffeine. Like, you don’t have it by 10 o’clock, you get a headache? I love caffeine, and I’ve always been really fit and healthy, and I know the importance of protein in your diet.

“Nicky jokes that I was in a tramadol-induced mindset when I got up and said, ‘I’m going to make a protein coffee’. She rolled her eyes and said, ‘Oh, you probably are, aren’t you?’ So I started making them in the kitchen. A pod coffee, a little bit of water, a little bit of protein – shake it up – and I was just living off these things.”

Shaun Winstanley, a police detective turned protein coffee entrepreneur, says "everybody is going through their challenges". Photo / Michael Craig

Winstanley had returned to desk work, but more surgeries were scheduled and performing at full field capacity looked further and further away.

“I used to think anyone that had fatigue was just lazy. I didn’t think fatigue was actually a thing. After these operations, I’m just so tired.”

But, also, “I can’t sit on the couch without being agitated. I should be doing something.”

He threw family savings into the product he’d brewed at the kitchen sink, found a pair of silent investors and, at the start of this year, took a long-term, unpaid leave of absence from the police to regain his fitness – and fully launch Firebird.

This month, Winstanley learned his high-protein, minimal sugar “original” coffee had been named a double finalist in the New Zealand Food Awards, organised by Massey University. More than 300 stockists – including New World, Four Square, Pak‘nSave, Fresh Choice, On the Spot and Mobil – are on board. Firebird Energy drinks sell in Fiji and Rarotonga; distribution into America, initially out of Fort Lauderdale, is pending.

An unexpected Auckland Food Show encounter with Shaun Winstanley, the police detective shot in downtown Auckland in 2023. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

A few days after this interview, Winstanley texts the Herald.

“I like concentrating on the good stuff now, rather than the not-so-good stuff in the past.”

He distils his recovery into four fundamentals: Be grateful for what you’ve got. Don’t dwell on the “what ifs”. Build mental resilience through physical exercise. Don’t be afraid to talk.

“This is what helped me through ... to be grateful that I was at home, I was with my kids, I was with my wife. I was alive.

“A lot of people go, ‘what if you were facing one centimetre that way?’. Well, I would not be telling the story; I’d be dead. How many struggles in the past have been [because of] dwelling on the what ifs? What if I hadn’t joined the police? What if I had made this decision? What if? What if? That can bring you down.

“Part of my recovery, I put down to building mental resilience through physical exercise. Do hard things today and make tomorrow easier, do easy things today and make tomorrow harder. Through the police, through my training, becoming a detective – I did hard things that gave me the ability to understand that this is just another hard thing.

“The last one is just don’t be afraid to talk. I’m still not great at it, I still keep a lot in. I had to promise my wife that I’d do at least six sessions with the psychologist ... you’re not weak to talk.”

Shaun Winstanley, at home with rescue dog Cookie. Photo / Annaleise Shortland

Winstanley has staked his future on Firebird. But it was never just about a protein coffee.

“I want the symbol of Firebird to be that symbol of resistance ... it’s another name for the phoenix. So, rising up from the ashes. The back story is all about that. Getting up and rising up from whatever you are going through, as corny as it may sound.

“Success to me, initially, was getting it in the hands and mouths of emergency services staff ... that was part of creating it. The ingredients are simple, they’re good for you. We’re all fatigued, but I likened it to my situation, going from job to job to job and I’d just have coffee. By the end of the day I’d hit the floor, and then I’d have to go to an incident where it’s life-or-death. It’s a decision that’s going to be scrutinised, potentially for years, and I’m making it off the back of three coffees and a BP pie?”

Recently released data shows New Zealand frontline police encountered almost 17,000 firearms – or nearly 10 a day – between December 2018 and April 2024.

“We put ourselves in harm’s way to protect the public,” says Winstanley, with zero grandiosity. “We are exposed to extreme danger.”

That Queen St construction site was not the first, second or even third time he’d been shot at. He recalls an incident earlier that year.

“As we arrived, [the offender] pulled out a gun and just started unleashing on us. We just managed to get the shield out the back of the car, shots were tinging off the police car ... we couldn’t leave, because if we leave, he’s a risk to the public.

“There have been others, but this one in particular, I think it helped build resilience and effectively helped me deal with the one where I got hurt. I knew it was going to happen at some stage; it’s the sad reality. And I’d dealt with it in my mind.”

Why does anybody join the police force?

“I was 24,” says Winstanley. “I think, to be honest, I wanted to drive fast cars and catch bad guys. And that hasn’t changed a hell of a lot over my career ... I’ve still got this desire to go back to the police.”

An X-ray image from early in Shaun Winstanley's recovery. A large, heavy plate is affixed to the lower border of his jaw and the smaller white spots are shotgun pellets that remained embedded in the police detective's face, despite many having already been removed.

Unlike a single projectile bullet, shotgun shells are packed with multiple spherical pellets. Early X-rays show them embedded in the lower right-hand side of Winstanley’s face – about 90 to 100 of the things, he estimates.

Ballistics glasses saved his eye, but he had ingested hot metal, his jaw was in at least 12 pieces, he lost five teeth, and, he says, “nerves were hanging there, apparently”. Surgeons were unable to remove every shotgun pellet. Periodically, they pop from his lip or emerge from the soft tissue inside his mouth. He collects them in a pottle.

James “Jamie” Olsen was the on-call oral and maxillofacial surgeon at Auckland City Hospital on July 20, 2023. On March 15, 2019, when the Christchurch mosque attacks resulted in the death of 51 people and injuries to 89 others (including 4O with gunshot wounds), Olsen was working at Christchurch Hospital.

“In New Zealand, we don’t treat huge numbers of facial, head and neck ballistics injuries, thankfully, compared with other countries around the world ... [but] we are seeing an upward trend in gun violence,” says Olsen. “I can tell you that these patients, their families and stories remain with you always.”

He has, so far, performed seven major operations on Winstanley. In the three months after the initial emergency surgery, two more procedures were required to further debride (remove) and revise soft tissues and remove smaller plates and screws from his jaw.

The more recent surgeries, described as “secondary/delayed”, are aimed at reconstructing lost jawbone and replacing teeth. Olsen says one final implant will be required, after which a prosthodontist will hopefully fabricate new teeth, restoring form, function and limiting the tightness caused by scars.

“In the emergency setting, we are focused on preservation of life ... secondary management is all about rehabilitation. The goals and expectations patients have are now different. The patient has survived their injury, now they want their old face back. They want to smile again, go out in public, kiss their loved ones. They want to get back to work.”

James Olsen, the oral and maxillofacial surgeon who has so far performed seven major operations on police detective Shaun Winstanley after he was shot in the face in 2023.

Olsen says gunshot wounds are difficult to treat.

“You have the direct trauma ... but you’ve also got thermal injury. There is a lot of heat generated. And then there are the chemicals. They’re not sterile. You’re forcefully impregnating this tissue with an infected little pellet at high velocity and superheated temperatures.

“If someone punches you, often it will just be a clean break. Or if you fall over, or get hit the wrong way with a rugby tackle. That’s what we see mainly. But if someone has taken a shotgun at close range? It’s like dropping a glass. It just shatters.”

Beyond that, he says, are the psychosocial impacts. The face accommodates structures that allow us to breathe, see, smell, hear, speak, chew, taste and swallow; we use its muscles to express emotion and interact with others.

“Damage to the face can have devastating consequences to basic human function ... They’re unique to us – Shaun has been looking at his own face in the mirror his whole life. His wife, family, loved ones and colleagues have also grown to know his face and, by extension, attach his personality to it.

“Permanent alteration or disfigurement of your face, the way it looks or moves, or the way you now speak or eat, can have profound impacts on how you view yourself and how others view you.”

Winstanley tells us he was never a vain person, always thought beauty was more than skin deep – but the changes to his face have been challenging.

“Man, when I’m looking in the mirror, it’s different than what it was before.”

From shot cop to coffee entrepreneur – the new face of Shaun Winstanley, a police detective seriously injured in July 2023.

Nicky and Shaun Winstanley were born on the same day. They were friends before they became a couple, aged 20. They married in 2013 and their collective story includes a rugby-playing year in Ireland for Winstanley and, for Nicky, the decision to become a surrogate. In Auckland, they live in a neighbourhood with friends in every direction. If there is a birthday on this street, everybody gets a slice of the cake.

“We’ve been through a lot together,” says Nicky. “I think you either, I don’t know, fall together or fall apart.”

The phone call she took after the school drop-off was from the Armed Offenders Squad.

“They didn’t know a heck of a lot at the time about the injuries. They knew he was still talking, that he was still conscious.

“I remember starting to panic and then very quickly realising, ‘No, this is too serious, you can’t panic. Turn it off, that’s not going to do anything.’”

At the time, she worked in recruitment for Hato Hone St John. Today, she’s at university and hoping to retrain as a frontline ambulance officer.

“If Shaun hadn’t been shot, we wouldn’t have had this time where he’s at home that would allow me to do this ... You can certainly make good things happen out of really crappy situations.”

In the aftermath of the shooting, police would put her up in a hotel close to Auckland City Hospital and Winstanley. The couple’s mothers moved into the family home to look after Conor and Leo, then aged 8 and 5.

“We made the decision to pretty quickly tell them exactly what had happened ... he’d been shot, he will be okay, but he is going to need some surgery and he may have some scars ... that Dad has to be asleep for a few days.”

Winstanley spent three days in a medically induced coma. The physical injuries, says Nicky, were “pretty horrific”. But she’d been able to speak to him; she knew he was alive.

Detective Shaun Winstanley spent three days in a medically induced coma after he was shot in the face by a gunman on a construction site in downtown Auckland.

“And knowing that two others had lost their lives ... knowing, actually, how lucky he was. How he was talking with an absolutely obliterated jaw, I don’t think I’ll understand, but he was more worried about me and the boys, which is who he is as a person. He was asking about the other victims ... ‘How many more? Did anybody get shot after me?’”

The position of his intensive care unit bed meant Winstanley couldn’t see anybody approaching from behind. He was jumpy and unnerved; at one point, his hands had to be restrained.

“He was still in this fight-or-flight state,” says Nicky. “Of course – because the last situation you were in there was an active shooter and there was chaos and blood and everything everywhere.

“I knew he wouldn’t let anything defeat him, but one of the memories that upsets me the most is when he woke up, one of the first conversations we had, he said, ‘I think I’m done with the police’.

“To hear somebody who has been so passionate and skilled and so incredibly talented at his job, and has loved it so much ... I just felt so sad, because I thought whatever physical stuff happens, that’s fine. I had just never seen his spirit so broken before.”

A few days later, Winstanley moved to a ward with a window. Randomly, the police helicopter buzzed past.

“And there was just this wee sparkle in his eye. And I thought, ‘yeah, he’s still there’.”

Winstanley calls Nicky the hero of this story. She, in turn, credits their young sons as a major force in his recovery.

“The boys played a really pivotal role in Shaun committing to doing the clinical psychologist thing – and to just getting out there and getting on with it ... I really think he’s found a lot of strength in the boys and vice versa.”

And when Winstanley told her he was going to become a protein coffee entrepreneur?

“I wanted him to go to sleep and rest ... it just felt like a monumental task when we were already in the middle of a monumental task.

But: “He’s always been a super achiever. I don’t know why I thought this would stop him.”

Kim Knight joined the New Zealand Herald in 2016 and is a senior journalist on its lifestyle desk. She has a master’s in gastronomy and has won multiple media awards for her reportage, including the 2025 Gordon McLauchlan Journalism Award.