December 9, 2008

A Christchurch tagger may be able to help police investigating a second arson attempt on a new police station.
Someone broke into the unfinished Christchurch south police station in Sydenham and started a fire about 4am on Saturday, Detective Senior Sergeant John Rae said.
A week earlier the same building had been targeted by an arsonist who set a fire on the upper level of the building.
Two new pieces of graffiti had appeared on a wall in the area, overnight on December 5 and 6, Mr Rae said today.
'Police are trying to identify the person because whoever was responsible for the tagging was in the vicinity of the fire and as such may well have information to assist with the fire investigation,' Mr Rae said.
It now seemed the damage to the building was greater than first thought and considerably more work was needed to repair it, he said.
The fire burned un-noticed for a while before a neighbour saw smoke and reported it to the fire service.
'Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to light fires in the building to make sure there was a lot of damage done and delay caused to the building project,' Mr Rae said The previous weekend a fire, still smouldering, was discovered by a workman on Sunday morning.
The ceiling of the building, ventilation, air conditioning and wiring was damaged.
It had been hoped to open the station in March.