Annabel Reid: Rotorua Daily Post reporter on the ongoing investigations into Rotorua triple homicide

Locals can only watch and wait as Rotorua police investigate a triple homicide after a woman and two children died last night. 

Emergency services arrived to find the children's bodies in a Glenholme property, and the woman died soon after.

A man's appeared in the District Court charged with assault in a family relationship - to reappear next month.

Rotorua Daily Post reporter Annabel Reid says neighbours who saw police arrive have been looking on today. 

"They were discussing it on the street with one another and watching as police carried out their duties - they had tape measures and markers and drones." 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Annabelle Reid is a reporter for the Rotorua Daily Post. Hi, Annabelle.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hello.

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Is this the father?

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Well, police are still investigating, so I can't confirm if
it's the father. A man appeared in the Rotorua District
Court this afternoon, which we understand is related, and he
was charged with assaulting a person in a family relationship.
He has name suppression, and three other names people were also...

(00:29):
given name suppression. So that's not really something I can
confirm at this stage.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
And depending on how this investigation goes, he could obviously
be upgraded to homicide because this is a homicide investigation,
isn't it?

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well, the man is in custody at the moment, and
he's set to reappear in court on the 2nd of October. But, yeah,
police are still investigating, so, yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
What do you understand, Annabelle, happened? Because what I was
told is police got there last night and unfortunately and
very sadly, the kids were already dead. The mum was
alive but died on the way to the hospital in
the ambulance. Is that what happened?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, so two children were found dead at the property
and a woman died at the scene. The scene was
described as extremely confronting and traumatic for all the emergency
services responding.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
I was at this.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
residents this morning and spoke to neighbouring people, which they
didn't really know what had happened. Some said they heard
and saw a number of police cars arriving last night.
Some heard them banging loudly on a door and saw
police with torches. One woman said that she thought that

(01:45):
police were at the scene until about midnight. And later
in the morning, people I spoke to were still quite
unaware of what had happened, and they were discussing it
on the street with one another and watching as police
carried out their duties. They had, like, tape measures and
markers and drones. But, yeah, not many people knew too much,

(02:09):
but they were definitely keen to know, and obviously they
will know now what happened.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah, all right. Annabelle's pretty confronting. Thank you very much, mate.
Look after yourself. Annabelle Reid, who's the Rotorua Daily Post reporter.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
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Speaker 1 (02:27):
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