Grotesque Echoes

"[As a random incident this was an] absolutely tragic attack. [The woman was] understandably very shocked and distressed."
"It is understandable and concerning to have an armed offender outstanding but I want to reassure the public we are working hard to identify and locate the offender."
"It is our absolute priority."
Det.Insp.Graham Pitkethley, New Zealand Police

"Then something happened. Her boyfriend changed his tone. He was less calm and the guy just seemed to shift in that moment."
"Then he smashed the window with the barrel of the gun and put the gun through the window and shot him twice."
"I think she was pretty sure [he] wasn't alive at that point."
Anonymous nearby resident

Sean McKinnon has been named as the victim in the New Zealand shooting.   Picture: Facebook.Source:Supplied

A woman living nearby a small beachside town in New Zealand detailed to the New Zealand Herald that a woman had approached her home barefoot, with cuts on her face, wearing jeans stained with blood. She took the woman in, and heard her story of camping in a van with her Australian boyfriend in an off-the-beaten-track area known for its beaches and surfing. Sean McKinnon, 33, was vacationing with Bianca Buckley, 32, in Raglan.

She was awoken, hearing loud voices, then saw her boyfriend fumbling about evidently trying to find the keys to their rental van. A man had approached the van with a gun, demanding the keys to the vehicle. It appeared that Sean McKinnon had decided to cooperate with the demand initially, then suddenly changed his mind, possibly to challenge the person with the gun, refusing his demand. The instant response from the gunman was to shoot McKinnon twice, killing him.



The killer then shoved Bianca Buckley out of the van, telling her he had no intention of shooting her. She sprinted away, running around two kilometres, until she arrived at the woman's house. After the alarm had been sounded, police found Buckley's fiance's body in the camper van a few hours later, an hour's drive away from where they had been parked, in Gordonton. A homicide investigation was launched and a General Arming Order issued.

Police now knew they had a dangerous killer on the loose and they have been warned to arm themselves in the search for the gunman. This scenario is eerily familiar, all too similar to a horrific event that took place a month ago in northern British Columbia when another Australian man and his American girlfriend were shot to death by two B.C. teens who later also killed a biology lecturer from UBC, taking his van to drive to northern Manitoba, police in hot pursuit.

Eventually the two teens originally from Port Alberni on Vancouver Island, after experiencing days of survival camping in a remote northern Manitoba bush, coping with boggy, mosquito-and-black-fly infestations, hoping to avoid wolves and bears, and trying to elude a combined RCMP-military search for their whereabouts, were found dead close to the Nelson River, Manitoba on August 7.

It would be purely coincidental, but like Australian Lucas Fowler and his girlfriend Chynna Deese, who met while abroad and found so much in common with their shared love of the out-of-doors and travelling, Australian Sean McKinnon and Canadian Bianca Buckley too met while travelling in South America, and their passion for adventure and surfing made them inseparable.

Until in Bianca's case, she was lethally separated from Sean, while Lucas and Chynna died together, all victims of psychopaths.

Unlike the two murderers who shot Lucas Fowler and Chynna Deese to death and then turned their guns on themselves to commit suicide together, the killer of Sean McKinnon, a 22-year-old man, has been found and arrested, and charged with murder, aggravated robbery and threatening to kill. Police stated their belief that the fatal attack was a random, happenstance event.

Police in New Zealand collect and photograph evidence at the Te Toto Gorge lookout after an Australian tourist was killed following what police believe was a random attack on the van where he and his Canadian partner were sleeping inside. (Alan Gibson/New Zealand Herald via Associated Press)