In New Zealand gunman’s hometown, family bear in mind violent video games, trouble with girls

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GRAFTON (WASHINGTON POST) – On the road into this small town, a sign is proof of a network in shock: “He does now not represent us,” it says, referring to the alleged killer few right here need even to name. But nowhere became the surprise extra evident than the various family of 28-12 months-vintage Brenton Tarrant, accused of a hate-fuelled massacre that left 50 people lifeless in mosques in the New Zealand city Christchurch on Friday. “We’re all gobsmacked; we do not know what to suppose,” Tarrant’s eighty one-yr-old grandmothers Marie Fitzgerald told Australia’s 9News in an interview.

“The media said he is deliberate for a long time, so he’s glaringly no longer of sound thoughts, I do not assume.” In Australian media, an image began to emerge of a young guy who grew up with computers as his quality buddies, misplaced in a world of violent video games and uncomfortable around girls. His father, Rodney Tarrant, died at the age of forty-nine, even as suffering mesothelioma, the most cancers of the lung, the Sunday Telegraph newspaper pronounced. Tarrant’s mother and sister have been moved to a safe house with police aid; the family informed 9News. Clarence Valley Deputy Mayor Jason Kingsley said the community changed into shock.

In New Zealand gunman's hometown, family bear in mind violent video games, trouble with girls 1

“The character who carried out the attacks does now not represent us nor does he represent the values and ideals of our wider network,” the forty-one-year-old Kingsley stated. “This is an act of an individual, and our hearts go out to our brothers and sisters in Christchurch.” Grafton is home to approximately eleven,000 human beings, the financial epicenter of the Clarence Valley, much less than 640km north of Sydney and home to about 50,000 people. The town has struggled beyond a long time after many dairy farms went bankrupt and the location’s sugar industry and pork cattle farms were hit tough using shrinking agricultural subsidies. But Mr. Kingsley, the descendant of Indian migrants who has spent his entire life within the Clarence Valley, said he has in no way heard of any white supremacist, anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant businesses working inside the region and has by no means skilled racism.

“There isn’t any tension among new Australians and long-time period residents of the Clarence Valley,” he said. “This is a quiet vicinity, a super area to raise a own family. We are a welcoming and inclusive network.” Tarrant spent his high faculty years in Grafton and regularly become on his pc, said Madam Fitzgerald, his grandmother. “He spent a maximum of his time gambling games on computer systems, and mastering the ins and outs of computer systems, and playing video games on computers,” she told 9News. “I don’t think girlfriends had been on the timetable – he stated getting married become too tough.”

Madam Fitzgerald said Tarrant’s father dying in 2010 took its toll. She stated Tarrant could also have been extra fundamentally changed by way of a trip to Europe at a time while attacks through Islamic extremists assaults have been at the upward thrust. But even if he back to Grafton a year in the past for his sister’s birthday, she observed nothing out of the normal, 9News stated. “He was just his normal self, you already know. We all chatted, and we had a meal collectively to have fun on that occasion, and now every person’s simply devastated,” she advised 9News. “It’s so that a great deal for the entirety to soak up, that some in our circle of relatives could do whatever like this,” she said, calling it “unrepairable.” Tarrant’s uncle, Terry Fitzgerald, apologized to the households of the lifeless and injured in New Zealand. “We can not suppose not anything else, just want to go home and conceal,” he advised 9News.