Farmer: How I shot intruder

By TONY GEE

Paul McIntyre did not hesitate when he saw an unfamiliar ute being driven around the side of his farmhouse in the dark.

"I reached into the cupboard and grabbed a handful of cartridges I'd left there after coming back from pig hunting.

"I saw it doing a u-turn in front of my shed, then it was backing up into the shed."

Speaking publicly for the first time, Mr McIntyre told the Herald in detail about the shooting.

Questions are being asked as to whether he should face charges for firing at would-be burglars or whether he is an innocent man who tried to defend his property.

Armed with a pump-action single-barrel shotgun with a magazine underneath, he went outside to confront the three men who had come onto his isolated Northland beef farm in the dead of night on Sunday.

Approaching their ute, he saw they had his quad farm bike halfway on to it.

Farmers in the area had reported thieves stealing farmbikes and other equipment.

"I told them to put it back and fired a shot over their heads."

The men piled into the ute and took off down the road.

"I then thought it was best to shoot one of their tyres out. I fired a second shot at a back tyre, but it must have gone astray.

"The police told me later it must have ricocheted and gone through one guy's back and come out of his neck."

The ute crashed into a fence.

"Two guys pushed the other one out, left him on the ground and took off down the road.

"I said, 'Aren't you going to help your mate?'

"The guy on the ground was making groaning noises. He said, 'You didn't have to do that, bro'."

Mr McIntyre ran back to his farm house and called the police and an ambulance.

But it was hours before police arrived at his farmhouse in the Whangae area near Kawakawa.

"It was three hours before I saw a policeman and then they detained me. Then the ambulance turned up."

Asked if he tried to help the wounded man, Mr McIntyre said: "I didn't want to touch him. He was talking and seemed to be okay."

The shot man was taken by helicopter to Whangarei Hospital, about 54km south, then transferred to Auckland Hospital.

Last night, the 29-year-old man, who lives in Moerewa, was in a stable condition after surgery.

Detective Sergeant Rob Hubbard of the Kaikohe CIB said yesterday that a decision on whether Mr McIntyre would be charged would be made after he had spoken to the injured intruder.

Police have interviewed the two associates who left the man.

Mr McIntyre defended his actions, which have gained widespread support from neighbours and farmers fed up with thefts from their properties.

"What happened was a split-second decision. I wasn't going to go out there armed with a pen and paper."

Yesterday, the evidence of the incident was still visible. A tarpaulin covered the shot man's blood on a gravel track leading to the farm house.

Mr McIntyre's brother, Errol, said he did not think any farmer in the same position would have acted differently.

"You can't go out any more and investigate noises at night with just a cup of tea in your hand," he said.

Errol McIntyre said his brother, a single man in his 40s, was "a steady guy", who wanted peace and quiet.

He had taken phone calls from a lot of farmers since the shooting.

Many had offered moral support, and legal support to his brother if police decided to charge him.

"A lot of guys have had stuff stolen and they're saying it was good that this man was caught, but maybe not in the way it happened."

Northland Federated Farmers spokesman Bill Guest said he had warned for years that farmers would take up arms to defend their property.

"Farmers are sick and tired of these thieving [people] coming on to their farms thinking they can just help themselves. We've had a gutsful."

The situation had become so bad that some insurance companies would not insure farm bikes unless farmers could guarantee they would be locked up at night, Mr Guest said.

"The majority of farmers up here will have their sympathies with the farmer who allegedly shot this man, and a lot of people will say 'good job'," he said.

Farmers faced problems of cattle rustling as well as thefts of farmbikes and other farming equipment.

A quad farm bike could be worth up to $20,000.

Support for Paul McIntyre has also come from Northland MP John Carter, who says police should not press charges.

The MP said everyone had a right to protect their property.

"This was not a case of someone taking the law into their own hands.

"This was a case of someone deciding to protect their own property in an isolated area where you cannot expect to have immediate police protection," Mr Carter said.

Mr Carter believes there are plenty of precedents for police not to lay charges in a situation where people are defending themselves or their property against intruders.

But in Moerewa, a woman friend of the shot man said he was a "gentle fella". What had happened on Sunday night came as a surprise and "quite a shock".

The man's mother and father were in Auckland, where his mother was receiving cancer treatment.