The Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand was shaken on the day of the opening game in Auckland by a shooting in which two people were shot dead. That has the New Zealand police confirmed. A 24-year-old man fired at a construction site in the business center of New Zealand’s largest city at 7:20 am (local time) with a rifle around him. In addition to the two deaths, six were injured, including a police officer. The World Cup football is not in danger due to the incident.
The perpetrator holed up in an elevator shaft where he was found dead after an exchange of shots from a special police unit. It would be about a man who was under house arrest for domestic violence. He would have had permission to go from his home to the construction site in Auckland’s Queen Street.
The fatal shooting took place in the city where the opening game between New Zealand and Norway is scheduled for Thursday at 7 p.m. local time. The construction site in question is not far from a FIFA Festival Park, which opened two hours later than planned to receive football fans. Norway’s players’ hotel is a few hundred meters from where the shooting took place. Some players were awakened by police sirens and a helicopter flying overhead. Furthermore, the players were not inconvenienced by the incident.
Isolated incident
The New Zealand authorities, after consultation with FIFA, announced soon after the shooting that national security was not at stake. New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said there was no reason to postpone the World Cup. The shooting is considered an isolated incident and is not considered a terrorist act. New Zealand was rocked in 2019 by an attack on a mosque in Christchurch in which 51 people were shot dead. Since then, the law on automatic weapons has become much stricter.
The news overshadowed New Zealand’s biggest football tournament ever scheduled in the country. Grant Robertson, the Minister of Sport, announced that all activities surrounding the opening game of the World Cup in the sold-out Eden Park can continue. The gates of the stadium open at the end of the afternoon to welcome more than 40,000 fans. A record number for a football match in New Zealand.
The Dutch football association KNVB has through Twitter expressed condolences to the victims of the shooting. The Dutch national team will play the first group match in Dunedin against Portugal on Sunday at 7.30 pm (9.30 am Dutch time).