One person has been charged over the death of a young Otago man while on a hunting trip in Stewart Island earlier this year.
On July 5, emergency services were notified that Jock David Grant Davies, 21, who grew up in Tapanui, had been shot by a member of his own hunting party while in the remote Lords River area on Stewart Island/Rakiura.
A search and rescue team was sent to the island via helicopter, but Mr Davies was dead when they arrived.
A police spokeswoman said officers investigating the death had arrested and charged a 39-year-old man from Ashburton with careless use of a firearm causing death.
The man is due to appear in the Invercargill District Court on December 16.
Mr Davies was from a wellknown Tapanui family and had survived two battles with leukaemia.
He was first diagnosed in 2013 and again in 2018.
When the cancer recurred, the then 14-year-old stayed at Ronald McDonald House in Auckland for three months and received a bone marrow transplant.
After his death, Clutha district councillor John Herbert said Mr Davies was a "bloody good guy", and it was an "especially cruel" death after all he had endured.
"It’s just bloody horrible. No family should go through that.
"What he’s been through, what they’ve been through. It’s not fair."
