In Dunedin, the suspected attacker frequented a gym and lived in a rented apartment with bare walls and a bed as the only furnishing.
A police car is seen outside the accused gunman’s home on March 17, 2019, in Dunedin, New Zealand. By Shibani Mahtani , Shibani Mahtani Reporter covering Southeast Asia Email Bio Follow Wilma McKay and Kate Shuttleworth March 21 at 3:56 PM DUNEDIN, New Zealand — When the stocky Australian man moved into the bluish-gray house perched on a small incline in 2017, he told the young couple next door he had traveled the world and was looking to settle down.
He would exchange polite hellos and waves with neighbors and make frequent trips to a nearby gym, they said. His rent would always arrive on time for an apartment he kept meticulously austere, with bare walls and a bed in the living room as the only furnishing. He trained with semiautomatic rifles at a gun club in a forest about a 45-minute drive south of Dunedin. He bulked up, hefting weights of up to 440 pounds at a 24-hour gym. Either by choice or happenstance, the gym he picked had a view of a day-care center for Muslim children across the street.
“The other poignant feature of this for Dunedinites is, of course, the revelation that the evildoer lived among us — in my case, just three blocks away from my home,” said Michael Woodhouse, a member of Parliament based here. “He was hiding in plain sight.” Tarrant’s mother, Sharon, and sister Lauren have been under police protection, sequestered since the attacks. They have not spoken with the news media.
In 2016, he visited Turkey twice, first in March and later in September, according to the Daily Sabah newspaper. Late that year, he visited Serbia, Montenegro and other parts of the former Yugoslavia, stopping at the sites of battles between Muslims and Christians during the centuries of Ottoman rule.
It was right after these travels, according to property and hotel records, that Tarrant came to set up base in Dunedin. After spending four nights at the cheapest available room in a city center hotel, he moved in August 2017 to a one-bedroom duplex apartment on leafy Somerville Street, which is dotted by shadows from surrounding hills.
“[He] didn’t have any lounge furniture. But I mean, that’s just quirky rather than raising a red flag or anything like that,” the property manager added. “It’s just like, okay, this is the way this guy lived, that’s fair enough — each to their own sort of thing.” The alleged shooter trained at the Bruce Rifle Club near Milton, south of Dunedin. Recreational shooters say that no other club in the area offered shooting and target practice with military-style assault rifles. A video on YouTube of the rifle club that has since been deleted shows its members practicing on human silhouette targets, frowned upon by the vast majority of shooters in New Zealand.
In a statement, the Bruce Rifle Club’s vice president said Tarrant “seemed like a normal person and never gave anyone reason to suspect he would carry out an attack like he has.” Bulgarian officials confirmed that he also had visited the country in late 2018, flying to the capital, Sofia, and later driving to Hungary. Bulgaria’s chief prosecutor, Sotir Tsatsarov, said that Tarrant spent around a week in the Balkan nation and that prosecutors are now probing whether he visited as a tourist “or if he had other objectives.”
Tarrant’s manifesto does not mention the center but does state that he initially was planning to attack the Al-Huda Mosque in Dunedin. Muslim community elders there say the mosque’s security-camera system was stolen about three weeks before the Christchurch attacks.
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