The night before Anzac Day, a Bay of Plenty couple and their tenant were settling in for the night on their rural property when a man burst into their lives for a terrifying two hours. Aleyna Martinez sat down with the victims as they told their story. 

Trapped in her living room while an intruder allegedly held her 74-year-old tenant hostage in a granny flat on her property, a terrified woman video-called her daughter to say goodbye. 

“I thought I was going to die, so did she,” said Jo, who did not want her last name published. 

The night before Anzac Day the Edgecumbe household had gone to bed by 10.30pm. 

About a half-hour earlier, police had approached a suspicious vehicle on State Highway 30 and the sole occupant allegedly discharged a firearm at them. 

 

Moments later the driver allegedly presented the weapon at the officers, who withdrew immediately. 

As they called for backup, police claim that the alleged gunman stole a vehicle from a nearby residential property and drove off. 

Police quickly set up cordons and located the vehicle, preventing the man from leaving the area. 

What happened next was the most terrifying two hours of the family’s and their tenant’s lives. 

The police claim that in an attempt to avoid them, the alleged offender drove into a rural property. 

Jo said she was still half asleep after a hard day and the family dog “started just going mad” so she let him outside. 

“He just flew in the air, around the side of the house and straight to the tenant’s front door.” 

Noticing a car she didn’t recognise outside; she woke her husband and asked him to take a look. 

“I said: ‘You need to get out, there’s someone out there’.” 

She followed her husband outside and saw a man they did not know standing in the carport near an open door to the tenant’s home, a granny flat on the same property. At that point, the couple did not know if their tenant was alive. 

The tenant, who did not want to be named, alleged the man entered his home and demanded his car keys, which he refused to hand over. 

The car had a keyless controller, which they said the man couldn’t figure out how to use. 

After the vehicle wouldn’t start the man allegedly came back inside. 

“I’m stubborn,” the tenant said. 

“I wouldn’t have given it to him regardless.” 

The tenant, whose bedroom and lounge are next to where the man allegedly smashed through the property’s locked electric gates with the vehicle, had only enough time to get his jeans on when he opened the front curtain to look out the window. 

“I saw him, and he saw me,” the tenant said. 

“I was gonna have a go at him even though I’m 70 and he’s a big man. He was a big man. But I wasn’t going to take it lying down.” 

Jo said the man couldn’t start the car. 

He is alleged to have locked himself and the tenant inside the granny flat. 

Retreating to the main house with his hands up, Jo’s husband made it safely inside with the dog; Jo quickly shut and locked the door and she called the police. 

The man then allegedly took the tenant hostage. 

A blood-stained duvet at a property in Hydro Rd, Edgecumbe. Photo / Andrew Warner 

For the next few hours the couple’s family, including members outside of Edgecumbe, grappled with the possibility their parents might die. 

Inside the granny flat, the man allegedly stripped off his clothes to his underwear, ransacked the tenant’s belongings, throwing his dresser drawers through the main front windows. 

“The whole time he was swearing at [the police] through the windows. 

“Every time they got near, he’d yell ‘get back, get back’ and then he grabbed hold of me.” 

Finding the tenant’s spare cell phone that had a prepaid balance on it, the man logged into his Facebook account and called a woman. 

“They’re gonna shoot me, they’re gonna kill me,” he told her. 

The tenant, who lost his wife to cancer four years ago, said he was thinking about accepting his fate before the man eventually surrendered to police. 

“I was thinking, ‘well, if this is how I’ve got to die, then this is how I gotta die. Nothing I can do about it’.” 

Having allegedly been attacked more than a week ago, the tenant had been in hospital twice after the cut in his head became infected. 

“He was vomiting and after he came back from hospital the first time. He got really sick, really fast. Before that he was in perfect health,” Jo said. 

Hydro Rd in Edgecumbe. Photo / Andrew Warner 

 

A week after the incident, the shock is only beginning to wear off and mental trauma is setting in. 

“Just going to bed and hearing noises and making sure that gate’s shut, because we’ve only got rope to tie it up until they fix it,” Jo said. 

Her husband works four days on and four days off. Jo says she feels safer at work. 

“I don’t feel strong today, which worries me,” the tenant said. 

Jo said she was grateful that police didn’t shoot and kill the man on her property. 

She was also thankful that her grandchildren who are 6, 8, 11 and 16 were not there at the time. 

A 31-year-old Kawerau man appeared in the Whakatāne District Court on Friday, charged with offences relating to using a firearm against law enforcement, kidnapping, wounding with intent to injure, aggravated burglary, failing to stop, threatening to kill, unlawfully taking a motor vehicle, and wilful damage. 

He is due to appear again on May 15. 

This article was originally posted on the NZ Herald here.