Police storming ends standoff

Armed police patrol downtown Tauranga yesterday as colleagues tried to resolve the standoff with the man. Picture/ Alan Gibson

Armed police stormed the fifth floor of a Tauranga hotel at 12.30am this morning and arrested a man who had been threatening to detonate bombs.

Police spokeswoman Kris McGehan said the arrest was made without any injuries and the man put up no resistance

Police found an "imitation explosive device".

The man will appear this morning in Tauranga District Court.

The standoff had brought central Tauranga to a standstill after the man, described as a backpacker hostel's "perfect guest", had tried checking in to the city's top hotel, then threatened to blow it up.

The 57-year-old, from Slovenia in Eastern Europe, took what was feared to be suitcase bombs into The Hotel on Devonport.

He is understood to have spent several months battling the Immigration Service to stay in New Zealand.

Guests of the 38-room hotel and apartment residents of the associated 16-storey Devonport Towers were evacuated with hundreds of workers and customers of shops and other businesses in an area covering about 40 per cent of Tauranga's central business district.

Staff of the hotel were confronted by the man about 11am when he arrived with two large suitcases and a backpack.

He asked for a room. Hotel owner Paul Bowker said that when the man was told there were no vacancies "the guy got agitated and said he wanted to speak to Helen".

They assumed he was referring to Prime Minister Helen Clark and he was ushered into a conference room, to keep him from other guests.

He then said he had explosives and wanted to kill himself.

Police armed offenders squad members were called and although area commander Inspector Murray Lewis reported at 3pm that trained negotiators had established "a really good rapport" with the man, the standoff continued until the room was stormed early today.

The man had been living for about three months at the Harbourside Backpackers hostel, not far from the Devonport hotel in the Strand, where he checked in as Jacob Sollivan.

Hostel owner Sarah Meadows, who had to evacuate the rest of her 30 or so guests during the bomb scare, was shocked that such a "lovely man" was at the centre of the drama.

"He is a lovely man, probably a bit frustrated because he wants to stay in New Zealand," she said.

"I knew he was having trouble with Immigration, I didn't know to what extent, but he was a perfect guest. He was not aggressive, very polite and always paid his rent on time."

Helen Clark said she was briefed on the incident but not told officially the man wanted to talk to her.

Kris McGehan said negotiators continued talking to the man in a bid to settle the incident peacefully.

Dozens of shops, offices and banks were shut for the rest of the day, as were restaurants and bars lining the southern half of the Strand along the waterfront, although those north of Wharf St were overflowing with evacuees.