Immigration NZ has confirmed the tourists at the centre of a media storm have been issued a deportation notice.The tourists were accused of leaving rubbish on Takapuna Beach, abusing a local woman and scamming restaurants by refusing to pay for meals.
John Johnson, his brother, David, as well as their partners and children, including a young baby, and mother Eileen Doran, of Liverpool, and father, say the social media furore which kicked off due to rubbish left on the beach has cut short their holiday and they’ll return home a week earlier than planned.
Instead, John Johnson said they come from a good family and his grandfather was the “10th richest man in England”.
The drama kicked off on Sunday after several family members were filmed leaving large amounts of their rubbish on Takapuna beach. The group were videoed by local Krista Curnow as they left when Johnson’s eight-year-old nephew was seen abusing the woman, and threatening to “knock your brains out”.
Curnow said she asked the group to pick up their rubbish: “About four or five ladies stood around me … in a half circle. They were saying they were going to hit me … and I started walking backwards to get out of it.
“Even grandma and the child got involved, saying they wanted to punch my head in.”
He said the rubbish that they left behind was “not the end of the world”.
“At the end of the day it’s not the end of the world, there was a bit of a mess left there but the reason why it was left there was because everyone was intimidated and forced to leave the beach.”
Staff at Mr India and The Backyard Bar & Restaurant in Northcote said a group ordered hundreds of dollars worth of meals at their restaurants before refusing to pay because they claimed there was hair in the food. An inner city coffee shop lodged a complaint with police after a group refused to pay for a chocolate cake and abused the owner.
The incident had riled so many Kiwis a petition has even been launched to get the family kicked out of the country.
“It ain’t very nice, we’re human beings like everybody else and it ain’t very nice what happened.”
Image: Belinda Feek
