By PHILIP ENGLISH, BRIDGET CARTER and REBECCA WALSH
A man connected to a police shooting in Birkdale appeared in the North Shore District Court yesterday.
Samoan-born student Iao Metai Aliimatafitafi, 63, limped into the dock facing charges of disorderly behaviour and resisting arrest.
He was at an Eskdale Rd property when a man
was shot in the torso around 5.20pm on Tuesday by a police officer who had been called to help deal with a noise complaint.
The shot man has undergone surgery and was in a stable condition at Auckland Hospital last night.
Aliimatafitafi, meanwhile, was remanded on bail without plea to reappear in two weeks.
Outside the court, Aliimatafitafi leaped a garden bush and rushed to a waiting car when confronted by news crews after he was bailed by Judge David Wilson, QC.
A North Shore City Council spokesman said Tuesday's incident occurred when security guards went to a property about 4pm after receiving a call from a house "some distance away". The guards issued a written warning after being verbally abused by a man at the property.
They returned within an hour, accompanied by police, after another complaint that the music had not been turned down.
The spokesman said police were called when contractors had to go to a property to confiscate equipment.
"It rarely escalates to a stage where we have to confiscate equipment. Such an incident as that on Tuesday is really unheard of. Unfortunately the person who was told to turn the noise down was very verbally and physically aggressive."
The council received about 3000 noise complaints a month. Last year police had been involved 70 times in the seizure of property. So far this year equipment has been seized eight times.
There had been no reported noise complaints from the address before.
An Eskdale Rd resident, who did not want to be named, said the house where the incident occurred often had loud music, parties and sometimes fights.
A relative of the man who was shot said she believed he had never been in any sort of trouble before.
Police who attended the incident found one of the people inside the house had a machete, so the armed offenders squad was called. While one man was being arrested outside the property, another allegedly came at three officers, wielding a machete and another type of knife.
