Kate Hawkesby: We can't put our heads in the sand and pretend this violence isn't happening

I got sent a video yesterday, which I assume is doing the rounds, of the Point England shooting in Auckland on the weekend.

2.30pm on a Saturday afternoon in a suburban neighbourhood in Auckland. That makes three shootings in a week by the way for our country, three separate gunmen on the loose – still at large – and three victims dead.

It seems unfathomable that this is the state of our country right now. The video of the Point England one shows a scene of chaos; people running around, as shots volley out across the reserve.

John MacDonald: Shooter in wrong place and should've been doing time

“You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

That - or words to that effect - is what Matu Reid said to his partner back in 2021 after he’d pushed her off a chair, thrown an object at her head, kicked her in the stomach - sending her flying backwards - stood over her, and grabbed her throat for about 10 seconds. During which time she couldn’t breathe.

Well, we now know exactly what he’s capable of. Or was capable of. Because yesterday morning, he turned up at the building site in central Auckland where he’d been working and went on the rampage with a shotgun.