New Zealand police lock down city in standoff with gunman

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
School children huddled in classrooms and office workers hunkered down in high rises after police locked down part of a New Zealand city Thursday during a standoff with a gunman suspected of killing one officer and shooting three other people. Police cordoned off part of the North Island city of Napier, closing some stores, locking people out of scores of houses and ordering residents who were at home to remain indoors. Officers surrounded a house where the gunman fired a fusillade of shots from an automatic rifle during a drug raid, Superintendent Sam Hoyle said. One officer was killed in the shooting and two others seriously wounded, along with a bystander. The dead officer's body lay on the lawn of the house as the standoff continued seven hours after the shootings, Hoyle told reporters.