Hunt for samurai swordsman

Wanganui police are looking for a Waverley man who allegedly leapt his neighbour's fence brandishing two samurai swords.
The neighbour, who didn't want to be named, told the Chronicle that he and his partner were sitting on their verandah on Friday with a few friends when the man jumped the fence about 8.30pm.
"He was waving two samurai swords and yelling that he was going to kill us all," the neighbour said.
The women ran inside the house screaming, while the men picked up chairs to defend themselves and try to fend him off, he said.
"He stabbed the chairs over and over again.
"He really meant business. It was really frightening.
"He was seriously going off."
The man said he was just thankful that his four children, aged 1 to 12, had just been taken to the babysitter for the night.
"It would have been terrible for my children to have seen it.
"It was bad enough for us, and we're decent-sized big guys," he said.
"He kept yelling 'Osama Bin Laden, Osama Bin Laden' as he waved the swords as he ran at us," he said.
Even though he and his friends had managed to get the swords off the man and hold him down for a while, he got away just as Waverley police arrived, he said.
Two dog squads had also been called out from Wanganui. Waverley police constable Rob Conder said the search for the man had been fruitless to date and that he was probably "holed up inside somewhere".
"It would be in his best interests to turn himself in to police. He can't run forever."
Mr Conder would not say what information police held on the man, except that he was known to them.
Since Friday night, the neighbour said, he had been taking his family from house to house, afraid the man might come back and try it again.
"I can't risk my family being harmed, so I can't have us in harm's way, where he could terrorise us again."
Mr Conder said police were doing what they could, but in the rural countryside around Waverley it was like hunting for needle in a haystack.
"Unfortunately, we can't make people feel better - we try but we can't.
"When people are scared, there's not a lot we can say, except that we are looking and we are investigating."
The neighbour said he realised that he and his partner were probably over-reacting by not going home at night.
"But I am responsible for keeping my family safe, and I just can't have them sleeping in our house yet."
He said the family had lived in the house only a few months.