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A tragic picture is emerging of how a party-pill binge and lack of sleep turned 37-year-old builder Steve Bellingham from a quiet, respectable man looking forward to setting up his own business into a hammer-wielding maniac shot dead by police.
As his shocked family struggled to understand how
Mr Bellingham could undergo such a Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation, police said they were working to provide a clearer picture of why one of their officers opened fire.
The exact details of what occurred remain unclear after conflicting witness reports of the shooting in the Christchurch suburb of Linwood on Wednesday night.
Mr Bellingham had reportedly smashed up a van with a golf club and broken into another vehicle with a hammer before being confronted by an officer and shot twice, including the fatal blow to the chest.
It was also revealed yesterday that Mr Bellingham was carrying a shoulder bag containing a hunting knife in a sheath when he was shot.
The bill to ban BZP, the active ingredient in party pills, passed its first reading in Parliament this month.
It has now been sent to a select committee for public submissions.
The minister in charge of drug policy, Jim Anderton, said there was clear evidence that the risks party pills posed were sufficient to ban them.
Last night, a spokesman for Mr Bellingham's family, John Trischler, said they did not have any real indication of what happened to his nephew.
Mr Bellingham's death has puzzled his friends and family, who remember him as kind, funny, great with kids and a "good Kiwi bloke".
The question is how such a seemingly well-adjusted father, with ambitions of running his own building business, ended up going off the rails and being shot dead.
His family in the Hawkes Bay do not have any answers.
"No one really seems to know what happened," said Mr Trischler. "The family are still trying to come to grips with this, and the circumstances of how it happened."
It appears Mr Bellingham, who was unmarried, had problems that had been eating away at him and came to a head in the days before his death in Stanmore Rd.
He had been taking party pills and not been sleeping for days.
Friends spoke of his becoming irrational. Campbell Smythe, 21, visited him 3 1/2 hours before the shooting and said he wasn't himself.
"He was just on his computer, and I had a cup of tea and pretty much left. All he said to me was that he just hadn't been sleeping and I just left it at that.
"He wasn't really in the mood to be talking about it. I knew something was wrong but I didn't know he was going to flip out the way he did."
Friends said Mr Bellingham did not appear to be a big drinker or drug user and it was totally out of character that he took a hammer and a golf club and began smashing things around him on Wednesday night.
Chris Young was in his car outside his flat in Stanmore Rd sending text messages when Mr Bellingham, whom he did not know, approached him, shortly before he was shot.
Mr Young, who described him as highly agitated, was scared of what he might do. "He definitely was not in a clear frame of mind. He said to me, 'Can I have a ride?' He tried to get in the driver's-side door. I said, 'No, f*** off'."
Mr Trischler said the family would remember Mr Bellingham simply as "a great guy, a good old Kiwi type of bloke".
Canterbury district commander Sandra Manderson said: "We have spoken to the family and police are working with them. We have given them the information of what happened, and now we have to work on why it happened."
Mr Young has told the Herald Mr Bellingham charged towards the policeman with a hammer raised in the air.
But Keiran Cross and Amanda Duke said they saw him with his hands by his side, apparently unarmed, and standing still when he was fired upon. Another witness, Kenneth Prior, told 3 News Mr Bellingham, a friend, might have stumbled "but he definitely didn't run towards [the policeman]".
Ms Manderson said police would go over witness statements this weekend to get a better grasp of the incident.
"Different witnesses have seen different parts ... We are putting that together."
The policeman who killed Mr Bellingham had been interviewed as part of a homicide inquiry being overseen by the Police Complaints Authority.
The officer would be off duty for a couple of weeks. No decision had been made to stand him down.
