Weapons 'not why tagging suspects danced' | Northland News | Local News in Northland

The Whangarei man behind the dancing taggers video says talk of weapons is rubbish and the men suspected of tagging his fence danced willingly.

Police are continuing their investigations into a Whangarei couple who made two suspected taggers dance on video until police arrived and then posted the video to YouTube on the internet.

Yesterday police were interviewing one of the dancers - who claimed in a television interview after the video was posted that they were forced to dance after a weapon was pulled.

Shane, a student aged 18, alleged in the interview with TV3 that homeowner "Izzy" told them to go with him and if they would not dance he would start breaking bones. He claimed a knife was pulled on them and they were told to dance.

When he spoke to the Northern Advocate earlier in the week he made no mention of weapons and said he remained at the house because he knew police were coming.

Izzy said the allegations were made as the taggers tried to save face with friends after being humiliated by the video clips.

"I didn't have any weapons and there was no violence," Izzy said. "I'm a family man. I'm not interested in violence, weapons. I don't condone anything like that."

He said he and his partner, Tracy, were angry and that making the men dance was a spur-of-the-moment decision.

Though Izzy removed the three video clips from YouTube on Tuesday, other internet sites have since posted the 10-minute clip of the dancing taggers.

Two sites had more than 113,000 views in two days.

Izzy says he never intended for things to blow up as they had.

"I thought the boys had had enough humiliation, I'm going to delete this off my YouTube account'," Izzy said.

"Whangarei is a little town. All I wanted was 100, 200 people to see it, laugh at those boys and that's it."

On Wednesday, 20-year-old Karl Matthew Trail appeared in the Whangarei District Court on a charge of wilful damage. It was indicated he could be offered diversion by police.