Gunman targets boy racers

By PATRICK GOWER

As 100 boy racers milled around their South Auckland drag strip in the small hours yesterday, a gunman climbed out of a lowered aqua-blue Mitsubishi and opened fire.

He took aim 10 times and fired into the crowd 25m away. One bullet wounded a 25-year-old man - another hit a car.

The gunman sped off in a Galant VR4 bearing the number plate SIKNIS. The wounded man was taken to hospital for urgent surgery and doctors say he is lucky to be alive.

The shooting was the culmination of a night that saw a bloody fist fight and a hammer thrown through a windscreen.

Police described it as "something like the Wild West".

The shooting and violence in South Auckland's Te Irirangi Drive is the latest episode involving boy racers that has police worried and the Manukau Mayor furious.

South Auckland mother Sue Davis was travelling to work along Manukau's Roscommon Rd at 2.50 one morning when she became trapped in a street race involving hundreds of cars. Up to 1000 youths were blocking the road.

A Herald investigation last month found a thriving, organised boy-racer culture. Streams of cars roar out of the central city every weekend to race and skid on many Auckland roads.

Auckland City Mayor John Banks has also tried to crack down on boy racers in Queen Street. His threat to close downtown streets struck legal problems.

Yesterday's 3.30am shooting on the forecourt of a Gull service station has been blamed on escalating tensions between the gangs that have emerged as a key part of the boy-racer culture. It may also have been retaliation for an incident between two rival groups.

Claire Baxter was among the crowd in the service station forecourt, a meeting ground for groups about to go out on the four-lane Te Irirangi Drive and race.

"I heard two pings and the people yelling 'Duck'," the 19-year-old Manurewa woman said.

"I thought it was a paintball gun but then I saw a guy holding his chest and going down. He was crouching down, dizzy, saying, 'I don't want to go to hospital'. Then his mates picked him up and took him."

The shot man, from Otara, was taken to Middlemore Hospital, where he was last night in a stable condition.

Ms Baxter said most people were lying on the ground or hiding behind cars.

She believed the gunman was deliberately trying to shoot someone with his .22 rifle because he was firing at a car that had its windscreen smashed earlier.

Someone she knew had "got the bash" straight afterwards, but she did not say why and had not told police.

"Everyone thinks [the gunman] got the wrong guy. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Inquiry head Detective Senior Sergeant Gary Lendrum said the evidence of more than 30 witnesses led him to believe the shooting was deliberate. "He was taking the rifle up to his shoulder and aiming, he wasn't just shooting from the hip," he said.

Police have seized the car hit in a rear door.

No one had been able to chase the gunman because "basically everyone had dived for cover after the fifth shot".

The boy racers were divided into factions. "From time to time there is conflict and this may be an escalation of that," he said.

Herald investigations have found boy racers will join loosely based gangs with such names as BBKs (Bad Boy Killers), who drive Mitsubishi Lancers, the Skyline Boys, who favour Nissan Skylines, "Bros before Hoes" and the Chosen Few.

Police have been unable to find the gunman's car. Mr Lendrum said the registered owner had told them it was "lent" to a friend who did not return it.

When the Herald called at the owner's Otara house yesterday, a man said: "We don't want to know about it [and] we are not going to talk about it."

Residents around the kilometre-long length of Te Irirangi Drive used as a drag strip said up to 400 cars arrived after midnight every Friday and Saturday night.

The races are highly organised, with designated starters.

Spectators line each side of the street and residents described how they "scatter like mice" before police arrive, tipped off by police scanners and cellphone communication.

One resident, Karen Rolleston, said she had called 111 four times this year because she was so intimidated by the crowds.

"Its amazing no one has been killed in an accident," she said.

"I would like the police to come down here and patrol and try and drive them out of here.

"It really is scary at times but police don't even bother to take your name any more when you say it's the boy racers on Te Irirangi Drive."

Manukau City Mayor Sir Barry Curtis last night said he was furious at the latest incident and would today request an urgent meeting with police management about doing something to end the problem.

He had expected an incident like this would happen and was supporting a private member's bill going through Parliament that would allow police to confiscate the cars of offending boy racers.

"Someone is going to die, that has been signalled," he said.

"It seems that nothing has been done to deter these hoons. This is another serious issue being placed squarely on the plate of the Counties-Manukau police.

"I am going to be telling them to respond in a way that will overcome this problem. The time for talking is gone and the time for action has arrived."

Counties-Manukau police district commander Superintendent Ted Cox said he would happily meet Sir Barry again but admitted police were struggling to control boy racers.

"We're working with the council and other agencies to keep as much of a lid on it as possible," he said.

"It's fair to say it is a big social phenomenon and not an easy one to deal with."