Close 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”.
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