I was living with a fugitive
by Vy-wen-foo
“Did you hear a gunshot this morning?”
One has to admit, that is highly unusual for a Friday morning greeting, especially one from my apartment resident. Like many other city apartments, tenants hardly get to see each other, better yet – greet each other.
As I was dancing around in my sleep on Thursday night, a gunshot was allegedly fired in our apartment around 4.30am.
The neighbour was rudely awakened from her sleep having to convince her partner that she distinctively heard a gunshot.
She informed me that the police arrested a fugitive living in our apartment earlier today. The arrest has already hit the morning news.
Interestingly, the news reports that no gunshot was fired although the majority of Grafton residents in the area heard a loud banging sound, just like one of a gunshot.
The fugitive arrested, Richard Alan Duthie, was until last Friday, my downstairs neighbour.
In fact, my flat mate, Matthew Tan, had just spoken to the neighbour a few weeks ago when receiving a complaint that we “slide our doors too loudly”.
“Hi, I’m living directly below you and I’ve been waking up every one hour. I can hear your door closing. Can you slide it close [sic] SLOWLY? I’m trying to get some sleep”, Tan recounted him saying.
Unfortunately, that was the second time he had complained about our “door sliding”.
A few weeks after we first shifted in, we received a long letter of complaint about the children and mom unable to sleep because of the noise we were causing.
Assumingly, the mom was the female associate with her three kids from the news
We were certain it was Duthie that made that call few weeks ago, for our sensitve neighbour was confirmed to be living in the same apartment as the one he was arrested in.
TV3 news covered the Duthie arrest during the evening news that night, as we sat horrified that we lived, talked and annoyed a fugitive.
On the other hand, I was thankful that he had not decided to come up and blow our heads off for being “noisy” neighbours.
Though I ponder if the reason he was so sensitive to sound could be his inability to sleep soundly, after constantly being on the run from the police and all.
Background
40-year-old Richard Alan Duthie, had been on the run since September 3 when he allegedly shot at two officers during a routine traffic stop in West Auckland.
He was described by the Whangarei police Detective Inspector Mike Pannett on a Radio New Zealand as “a mobile offender who is traveling around the country and obviously has a very strong network contacts”.
Inside the apartment, police found large amount of cash, a 9mm Glock pistol, a Baretta pistol as well as ammunition.
It was known that he stayed with a 36-year-old female associate, a dancer, who is currently charged with helping Duthie.
Name suppression had been granted by Judge Lisa Tremewan when it was understood that the female has three children, of who will be ‘traumatised’ when they learn about their mother through the media.
From memory, Richard Alan Duthie was proclaimed by the police as “extremely dangerous and should not be approached”. He doesn’t sound that bad to me. At least he’ll make a polite if somewhat noise-sensitive cellmate for some lucky crim.
Justin Henehan.