Quinton Rihari loses Dunedin flat after threatening neighbours

Quinton Rihari was evicted from his Dunedin flat after letting off an LPG gas bottle in a shared hallway, yelling "boom, boom, you can all die". Photo / File

A man who threw plastic chairs at his frightened neighbours before letting off a gas bottle in the shared hallway and shouting “Boom, boom, you can all die”, has lost his Salvation Army flat.

Quinton Rihari couldn’t be reached for the Tenancy Tribunal’s hearing, where the Salvation Army sought to terminate the tenancy on his central Dunedin flat, saying he’d threatened to assault other tenants in the complex.

According to the tribunal’s recently released decision, Rihari received written warnings about his behaviour at his Thomas Burns St flat on three occasions.

The first was on December 27 last year, when he broke a painting in the corridor during a fight outside his room. It began at 3.30am and lasted for an hour and a half.

Then, in February, he verbally abused tenants when they asked him to turn his music down.

Two months later, on April 14, the Salvation Army says Rihari became angry and threw plastic chairs off a shared balcony, frightening other tenants.

After returning to his room, Rihari let off a 9kg LPG bottle in the hallway, yelling, “Boom, boom, you can all die”.

Police were called and took Rihari away, only for him to return and begin yelling at the other tenants, calling them “narks”.

Later that day, he told another tenant he was going to “punch her head in”.

Again, police were called and Rihari was taken away.

Under the Residential Tenancies Act, the tribunal can terminate a tenancy if it’s satisfied a tenant has engaged in antisocial behaviour on three separate occasions during a 90-day period and received written notice on each occasion.

Antisocial behaviour includes harassment or any act (whether intentional or not) that reasonably causes significant alarm, distress or nuisance.

The decision found that while Rihari received separate notices for each incident, the three incidents spanned 108 days, outside the 90-day period.

Despite this, the tribunal found Rihari had threatened to harm his neighbours over the gas cylinder incident and threatened to assault another neighbour.

As a result, it agreed to terminate Rihari’s tenancy.

When the Salvation Army was approached for comment late this afternoon, its media officer Kai Sanders said no one was available for comment, adding this wasn’t something the organisation would usually comment on because of its strict rules around privacy.

Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media adviser at the Ministry of Justice.