NEIGHBOURS have branded the Christchurch mosque shooter a “buffed up weirdo ready to explode” as the house where he plotted the massacre was revealed. Gunman Brenton Tarrant gave up his rental house in Dunedin, in New Zealand’s South Island, just nine days before he opened fire on two mosques, killing 50. The 1940s wooden two […]
NEIGHBOURS have branded the Christchurch mosque shooter a “buffed up weirdo ready to explode” as the house where he plotted the massacre was revealed.
Gunman Brenton Tarrant gave up his rental house in Dunedin, in New Zealand’s South Island, just nine days before he opened fire on two mosques, killing 50.
The 1940s wooden two bedroom property was up available for rent for NZ$280 (£144) a week.
Several of Tarrant’s neighbours said he had noticeably bulked up in recent months.
“He’s a stocky little guy, but you could see he had got leaner,” one male neighbour said.
“He’s been going to the gym a lot.”
A Dunedin hotel manager, who knew Tarrant by sight, said he had seen the Australian-born man’s muscles increase in size over the first two months of this year.
Justin also said he felt a “certain vibe” emanating from the 28-year-old.
“I was wary of him,” he said.
“I followed behind him a couple of times in the supermarket aisle and I felt something was not quite as it should be.
“He didn’t do anything but I worried. I’m trained to look out for that sort of stuff and to me, he was ‘off’.”
On March 6, following a real estate advertisement which has since been taken down, Tarrant’s apartment was made open for inspection.
The former public housing dwelling was divided into two flats.
Tarrant lived in one half of a bungalow with a basic kitchen, set off Somerville Road up on a hill in the city in New Zealand’s South Island.
The gardens at the now empty property are well kept, and some neighbours say he was a “quiet, ordinary guy who kept to himself”.
A multiple page manifesto allegedly released by Tarrant claims Dunedin’s Al Huda mosque was originally considered the target for an attack.
The manifesto also says he considered a mosque in Ashburton, a further 270km on the road up to his final destination.
But after a trip even further north, he allegedly changed targets to the two Christchurch mosques because they had “more adults and a prior history of extremism”.
The accused’s alleged manifesto, The Great Replacement, says: “I will be forgotten quickly. Which I do not mind.”
But at his Saturday court hearing, Tarrant’s face appeared to light up when he saw the crowd of media packed into the heavily secured court.
A short man with wiry sandy-coloured hair balding at the top, Tarrant looked bizarre in a heavy cream “no tear” prison smock circled by a leather restraint belt, which anchored his handcuffed wrists.
Brought into the large third floor courtroom by two prison officers, he looked around at the eleven police and court security guards lining the court and then back at the rows of media, and smiled.
Two more times he looked around at the journalists packed into the room, and smiled again.
Tarrant appeared in court for less than three minutes, and was remanded in custody until April 5.
The attack on the two mosques came minutes after the 28-year-old allegedly sent his vile 73-page manifesto to several prominent email addresses, including the one belonging to New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
In it, he described himself as “just a regular white man” from “a working class, low-income family”.
A spokesman from Ms Ardern’s office confirmed the document was sent to a generic address not checked by the Prime Minister herself.
The death toll from Friday’s attack has risen to 50, and 36 injured people remain in hospital, with 11 in a critical condition.
A four-year-old girl is among those fighting for her life in Auckland’s Starship children’s hospital.
