Shot in the face while responding to the 2023 Auckland CBD shooting, Detective Shaun Winstanley has lost count of the number of operations and procedures he has undergone. He spoke to Breakfast’s Jenny-May Clarkson about his recovery, the physical and emotional toll it took, and his determination to move forward.
On the morning of July 20, 2023, Detective Shaun Winstanley was nearly finished his morning protein shake when a call crackled over the radio — a shooter was at large in the Auckland CBD.
Detective Shaun Winstanley spoke to Breakfast’s Jenny-May Clarkson about his recovery, the physical and emotional toll it took, and his determination to move forward. (Source: Breakfast)
At around 7.20am, 24-year-old Matu Reid had entered the under-renovation One Queen Street building with a pump-action shotgun and opened fire. By the end of the morning two construction workers, Solomona To’oto’o and Tupuga Sipiliano, were killed and 10 others were injured in the shooting. The shooter also died.
Winstanley and his colleagues began to prepare for what was shaping up to be a serious incident, before leaving their Manukau base and heading for the central city.
“We were really hustling to get there to help out the staff on the ground,” he said, adding that he wondered if rush hour would prevent them even reaching the scene before the incident was resolved.
Updates from ground staff and the Eagle police helicopter indicated that “things were escalating” and the team prepared themselves— physically and mentally — for the unfolding incident that awaited them.
Tactical gear, including ballistic helmets and glasses, were donned en route, and Winstanley said the squad “started to switch our mindset to the job that we had to do”.
When they arrived at the scene, all Winstanley could hear were sirens. Around 50 police cars had surrounded the site and cordoned off several streets.
Gunshots rang out from the construction site that overlooked Te Komititanga as Winstanley sprang into action, throwing a helmet to a teammate and putting a sledgehammer down the back of his body armour in case breaching was required.
In formation, the team entered the 21-storey building and headed straight for the stairwell.
“As we’re going up, there were victims getting escorted down by other police staff. You could see the blood on them,” Winstanley said.
On the 20th floor, Winstanley’s team met other police staff. The mission was clear: locate the gunman, isolate him, and neutralise or arrest him.
The gunman was believed to be in a large lift shaft, which narrowed his location but did not fully isolate him. A plan was formulated to contain the shooter within the shaft, and Winstanley and his team were sent to the 18th floor.
“The thoughts in my head at that time was that we didn’t want him to get down and run out through the thousands of people that were out there congregating down the bottom of the building,” he said.
The team was met with a plywood door blocking the lift shaft, which was breached by officers.
“It was extremely dark in there, and I could hear something and sort of see movement.”
The officers then moved around to a second door, which was also breached.
“We tucked into the doors, which was part of our training, and I dropped down to one knee.
“I was looking upwards because that was where I’d last seen and heard the offender, and that’s when I heard the loud bang and felt like I’d been whacked in the face.
“I knew right away — I’d been shot in the face.”
The shotgun blast had shattered Winstanley’s jaw into a number of pieces and he estimates that around 30 pellets remain lodged in his face, some of which continue to pop out of his skin.
There was “significant” nerve and tissue damage, leading to numbness. However, Winstanley said movement on the right side of his face is now “pretty good”.
Several of his teeth are missing, but he hopes his recovery will progress enough that some anchors could be drilled in to then get some teeth put in — within six to ten months.
“Still to this day, I haven’t seen what my face looked like on day one.”
He said he had lost track of how many operations and procedures he had undergone, including a steel bar being inserted to stabilise his jaw.
“It hasn’t been easy, when you can’t eat, you’re sore, lying down at night with the throbbing and you haven’t slept for countless days because of that pain.
“I’m no oil painting, but what [the surgeon] has done to make me look the way I do at the moment and go from there to now, they’ve done an amazing job.”
Other than the pain, he said a big part of his recovery was learning not to run the day’s events through his mind “over and over” and not to ask himself what could have happened if he had looked down rather than up.
“It’s been said I was the ‘luckiest unlucky guy’ that day in the building, but I’ve learned through recovery that you can’t dwell too much on what-ifs, because if I was to concentrate on the what-ifs, it’s hard to move forward from that.”
He acknowledged he was not the only one that was hurt that day and that people were killed in the shooting.
“To them and their families I’d like to acknowledge and my sympathy goes towards them.”
When asked if he would run into a building again if it was the same incident, Winstanley said that he would.
“I’ve got a burning desire to, not exactly run into a building and get shot in the face again, but I’ve got a burning desire to be amongst the team and to do the job that we signed up to.
“There’s a good reintegration program within the police and I’m confident that I would be ready to go again once I’m medically fit.”
