'Rambo' wannabe gets served

Robert McInnes. Photo / Supplied

Whether he's a master of kung fu or simply a master of self-promotion, the myths of self-styled warrior Robert McInnes may have caught up with him this week.

The former Aucklander, whose training methods received national attention in New Zealand after the death of 17-year-old Jason Dooley in July 1989, claims to be a modern-day Shaolin monk and had found favour with the Thai royal family.

He was detained on serious weapons charges in his adopted homeland on Monday.

McInnes was arrested in the Thai resort of Pattaya after police found a large cache of firearms and ammunition in his bright yellow Hummer, emblazoned with the words: "SWAT police counter-terrorism unit".

Video footage on the Pattaya Daily News website shows McInnes angrily threatening a cameraman in Thai to stop filming as police display automatic weapons, smoke bombs and bullet-proof vests taken from the vehicle.

Police superintendent Colonel Nunthawut Suwanlaong said McInnes, who was a hand-to-hand combat trainer with the force, did not have a permit to carry the weapons and had not been employed by them for at least 12 months.

It marked a fall from grace - his personal website says he received an award from the Prince of Thailand for his work with the police.

New Zealand martial arts experts, who knew McInnes in the 1980s, were not surprised by the charges.

"He wanted to be Rambo," said Nigel Hay, chief instructor for the New Zealand Karate Association. McInnes, who calls himself sifu, or master, attracted thousands of youths to his extreme Sir Dorr brand of kung fu in the late 1980s in Auckland.

Hay said the students were ordered to shave off their hair and swear allegiance to McInnes, and bashed their heads against the floor until they bled to improve their chi, or discipline.

McInnes later contracted out the young fighters as bouncers, who were known as "head-bangers" because of the scab on their forehead.

A coroner found Dooley accidentally drowned when he tried to swim across the flooded Waiwera River, north of Auckland, in bad weather and a strong current.

Police told the inquest into Dooley's death he was among three trainees taking part in a day-long training session that started with exercises in a water-filled ditch.

McInnes fired bullets from a .22 rifle, which landed 400mm from Dooley as part of the group's "adrenalin training", then told the group he wanted to cross the river.

Dooley was swept to his death. Although he was never charged over the drowning, McInnes was sentenced to 10 months' periodic detention for discharging a weapon likely to endanger the life of his students.

Karate expert Hay added: "He was too young to be 'the master' as he claimed. He was trying to be a guru to those young lads.

"I remember one day we were walking to the pub after training and he started trying to walk up walls, it was just bizarre ... I think he made up a lot of the stuff he claimed to have done."

His website says McInnes travelled deep into northern China in the 1960s, where he learned the ways of Sir Dorr from Shaolin monks. This was when few Westerners were permitted into the Communist country, and came soon after Shaolin temples had been purged during the Cultural Revolution. At his 1989 firearms trial, prosecutors produced attendance records from Wesley and De La Salle Colleges in Auckland that proved McInnes had been learning maths and English when he claimed to have been studying 1000-year-old fighting techniques.

Rick Littlewood, a Judo "sensei" who has known McInnes for 25 years, said he was "all talk".

"I think the closest he got to China was going to the video store at the top of Queen St and renting kung fu movies.

"I wasn't surprised when I saw he had been arrested. He was always living in his own little world."

One of the few fighters to make it through McInnes' notoriously tough "Inner School" was Charlie Tamati, who teaches 150 students at a Sir Dorr school in Mt Albert, Auckland. Tamati, who takes pupils to Thailand each year to train with McInnes, denies he is a fantasist. "From what I have learned from him he is not just an ordinary Joe Bloggs. He is my sifu, my master. It's not up to us to question him ... We are taught to guard the Shaolin temples from attacks by other Shaolin monks."

McInnes was released from custody this week after posting bail worth $4370. His passport shows he was born in Castor Bay, North Shore, on February 1, 1963. Staff at his Pattaya property development firm said he had travelled to Bangkok on business and was unavailable for comment.

The new Thai superintendent says: "I have been sent here to clean up Pattaya following the previous Administration's failures and that is what I will do."