Back by popular demand - BeggsDule II

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Auckland trip

First of all apologies for ending the road trip blog so abruptly. I kind of missed out writing up the last leg of the trip which was the Pacific Coast Highway. I got back and went to work and kind of forgot to update the blog.

After nearly a whole month back at work it was high time for another holiday, I thought, so I have spent this weekend in Auckland. Highlight of trip so far (and unlikely to be topped) was riding along with the Eagle helicopter on Friday night.

It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life so far, exhilerating, surreal, and a great deal of fun. In all I had nearly four hours with them, 3 hours in the air. When I arrived at the base they told me that we had to go down to Ardmore to fix something on the chopper. I strapped myself in, the chopper lifted off and 12 minutes later we were on the ground at Ardmore. I stood around and watched planes for a while, while the mechanics worked on our machine and I thought this much-looked-forward-to excursion might be a bit anti climatic. Oh how wrong I was.

After lifting off again we heard a job on the radio where a male had abducted his ex at gunpoint and held her for an hour, so we were flew over the area and looked for the suspects vehicle. Before long, a hold-up alarm was raised at a bank and we were directed there, arriving before any ground units to find the bank appeared closed and it was a false alarm. Then there was a report of 6 people fighting at an address that we were just about to fly over, so we swooped in and had a look. Looking down at the house we watched and reported to comms that there were people running from the house, and then back into it and it appeared someone was being chased. With this still going on beneath us, a ground unit got into a pursuit with a vehicle that failed to stop and we diverted there.

In about 90 seconds we had the subject vehicle in sight, just as ground units lost sight of it, and we picked up the chase. The car was stolen, and it was being driven fast and dangerously. We watched as it nearly had an accident no fewer than three times, once coming within inches of clipping a vehicle. As the driver upped the anti and sped off into the Waitakere ranges, it became obvious that he just didn't have a chance. We were all over him. As he drove as fast as he could, we looped around and acended and decended and kept up with him with ease. As the car drove on to a gravel road he began to fishtail out, but he kept going and going. It lasted about 20 minutes before the offenders drove up the driveway to a house and bailed on foot. One ran into the bush and another into the house, while a female occupant made really no attempt to get away. People in other houses nearby hurried outside to see what was going on, waving up at us, it was really quite odd. We were running seriously low on gas and had to leave to refuel, so as soon as the first patrol cars arrived we were off. As we made a quick turn to head back to base, the last thing I saw was 3 officers holding one of the offenders down on the ground as he struggled to get away. Shortly we were back on the ground at the base. The pilot hopped out and refueled quickly, before we were back in the air and heading back to the scene where we still had one offender outstanding. We scanned the surrounding bush with an infrared heat-seeking camera but did not locate the offender that way. Officers on the ground located him in the ceiling space of the house that he had run into bringing a successful outcome to a chase that would have been unsuccessful without the help of the helicopter. Just before 8pm we landed back at base, I thanked the staff of eagle and left. Then went out for dinner and bored everyone with my stories from the air.