Stephen Lawrence Anderson

On February 8, 1997 Stephen Lawrence Anderson went on a killing spree in the small North Island town of Raurimu. Six people lost their lives that day and others were wounded as they tried to flee the gunman - a cannabis-using schizophrenic.

Helen and Neville Anderson had invited a group of their friends to spend Waitangi weekend with them at a lodge they owned at Raurimu. Neville Anderson built the lodge himself and the family had used it as a weekend retreat for about six years. Their guests included neighbours, long-time mates and work colleagues and their partners. Their paranoid schizophrenic son Stephen, who was under the care of the Capital & Coast District Health Board's community mental health team, also joined the group because his parents did not want to leave him alone at home in Wellington. Stephen Anderson had been resisting taking his medication, was obsessed with firearms and used cannabis heavily. He fatally shot his father Neville Robin Anderson (60); Anthony McCarty (63); Stephen Hanson (38); John Matthews (28); Andrea Brander (52); and Henk Van de Wetering (51), at or near the lodge, then wounded four others before fleeing into the bush. Anderson was found not guilty by reason of insanity on six murders and four attempted murders.