Video captures moment Gisborne woman uses car to intervene in suspected burglary

A video of what appears to be an attempted burglary stopped by a woman using her car has gone viral.

Martial arts club Rangataua o Aotearoa posted camera footage on Facebook from outside its building on Gisborne’s Disraeli St, next to Childers Road Reserve.

The video, timed just after 2pm on Tuesday, shows three young people outside a closed gate looking inside.

One, who appears to be a youth, climbs over the top of the gate, grabs a bag and throws it back over the gate.

The next moment, a white car drives up to the gate from the road. A woman gets out and pushes one of the people standing outside the gate before speaking with the person still behind it, appearing to gesture to them to come back outside.

Voices speaking over the footage in the background can be heard saying “Yeah, aunty” and “They were trying to steal my bag”.

She then picks up a bag and throws it back over the gate, into the person while they are climbing back over.

The video ends with everyone walking out of frame.

Commenters on the post were approving, with more than one describing the video, which had been viewed nearly 300,000 times by this afternoon, as “satisfying”. Another said it was “like watching a movie”.

Speaking to the Gisborne Herald, the driver, Melissa Mackey-Huriwai, said she was driving home from picking up her daughter from the airport when she saw the people outside the gym.

Mackey-Huriwai, a trainer for Rangataua o Aotearoa, didn’t recognise them, so she decided to turn around to get a better look at what they were doing.

“By the time we got there, someone was already on the other side of the fence.

“As soon as I saw they had alcohol in their hand as well, I knew they were up to no good.”

She thought they might run away when she stepped in, but they didn’t.

“They were in another world. They were like, ‘Oh, we didn’t know, I thought it was my bag.’ Just all lies, a bit lost.”

She said the bag belonged to a club member.

She was disappointed no one else nearby had thought to intervene before her, given the incident was in daylight.

“There were two guys across the road working, and I said to them, ‘Did you not think of saying anything?’ and they just looked at me, dumbfounded.”

She had not reported the incident to the police.

“I don’t really need to. I know who they are now, I’ve got their names.”

The Rangataua o Aotearoa club building in Gisborne, where trainer Melissa Mackey-Huriwai intervened in a suspected burglary on Tuesday. Photo / Gisborne Herald

The club has been burgled more than once before.

“I think it was last year, because the clothes get hung outside, so people jump over and take what they think they want.

“We got them on video, too, but we didn’t catch those ones.

“We had another one that actually got into the gym. We caught them, they stole a lot of equipment from inside the gym, but they dumped the video camera in the soccer field, and I just put it in rice and recovered it. So I was able to get the footage, identify who they were, and I pretty much went over and collected all our stuff.”

Police said Tuesday’s incident did not appear to have been reported.