Adult bullies in nasty' incident at high school

Police are hunting for three men who went to Tikipunga High School to threaten two 14-year-old boys and ended up having a "nasty" confrontation with principal Peter Garelja.
Mr Garelja was left shaken by the confrontation on Wednesday but he was not harmed and no weapons were involved in the incident, Daniel Cleaver, the Whangarei police officer in charge of youth crime, said.
The Northern Advocate understands that a girl, aged about 13, contacted her brother on Monday morning to say some boys in her class were mocking her.
Mr Cleaver said the brother, in his early 20s, got two mates and they went to the school to confront the boys.
"They were looking for a specific couple of students. There's been a confrontation between [the trio of intruders] and the principal of the school, which resulted in police being called," he said.
Mr Cleaver said while another teacher called police, the trio left the school and the trio did not get to confront the boys they were looking for.
However, the Northern Advocate understands one of the boys was too scared to return to his Otangarei home for the night because of fears they would visit him there and spent the night with friends.
Mr Cleaver said police knew who the trio were and wanted to speak to them as they have likely committed several crimes by going onto the school grounds.
He said police were concerned when members of the public felt they had to take the law into their own hands and if the girl felt she was being bullied or belittled, there were more appropriate ways to sort it out.
"It's a big concern for us when people turn up at a school like this to try to resolve a school issue and resort to these sort of tactics," Mr Cleaver said.
"The community needs to be aware that if there are issues in schools there are ways for them to be dealt with properly.
"Approach the school, or the board of trustees, to resolve the issue properly rather than take the law into your own hands and try to sort it out themselves.
"We don't want to see situations where there's a principal involved in a quite nasty confrontation with people that have no right to be there."
He said anybody going to a school under such circumstances would likely find themselves being dealt with by police.
Mr Garelja was not available to return Advocate calls yesterday.