Gender Transition Fire Starter Suspect Dodges Court.
At 4am on the morning of October 11 2022 David Morrison awoke to the sound of his dog barking outside. He opened his front door and was greeted by a sheet of flame coming from a stack of tyres soaked in petrol.
Thus began a long nightmare for the Morrison family accentuated by the refusal of their insurance company to fully compensate Mr Morrison for a conflagration that the police, the insurance company, as well as the Morrisons all agree was the deliberate work of a third party.
The suspect was rapidly identified by the police.
The name and photograph of the suspect was also circulated prior to name suppression.
This was because it was feared that they may have been injured or even consumed in one of the house fires.
A neighbouring farmhouse was similarly ignited and became a total loss in this same series of conflagrations.
The Morrison family now found their fire insurance company reluctant to compensate the family for their house which was uninhabitable as a result of the fire.
Their situation in regard to their charred house was exacerbated by the Labour government diversity blueprint, this time in the socio-criminal sphere.
This saw suspects and offenders given special treatment had they changed their gender or who were in the process of changing it.
The suspect fell into this category.
The suspect remains detained in the transgender wing of the Wellington region’s Arohata Womens Prison.
The suspect on numerous occasions though commanded to do so by the authorities has failed to appear as summoned at court fixtures.
This refusal to appear at any designated court procedure has included declining to give their testimony electronically under Zoom type procedures.
In spite of a change in government and thus of the overview of court procedure the suspect is still permitted to decline an appearance either in person or electronically.
With the arrival on New Zealand’s government benches in late 2023 of the new National-ACT -New Zealand First coalition the Morrisons anticipated a change in this procedural attitude and which would allow them at least to confront their insurers with their situation.
All this was further convoluted by the fact that the suspect is a foreign national.
In the event the suspect was known to the Morrisons and also to the owners of the other farm house incinerated on the night of October 11.
The suspect helped out at the neighbouring property and was in addition allocated grazing on part of the Morrison family’s property.
Friction appears to have arisen over the extent of the grazing land allocated to the suspect for their small dairy herd.
The Morrisons subsequently became aware of the pending difficulties attendant on matters of court process when they learned that the FBI and Interpol were involved in investigating the past life of the accused.
In the intervening time the now dispossessed Morrison family has lived in rental properties in the surrounding countryside.
They believe that the bizarre circumstances surrounding the fire at their and their neighbour’s farm houses has equipped their insurance company with the latitude to sidestep compensating them for their loss.
This especially applies to the peculiar provenance of the suspect and their determination to avoid appearing in court.
There the matter rests.
The Morrison family meanwhile remains homeless.
In the meantime David Morrison long after the fire looked after the suspect’s dairy herd which was eventually at the pubic expense transferred to a distant animal sanctuary at Wellsford.