"Media reports are incorrect and defamatory”, Knight

The CEO of Group 107 has hit out at ABC Australia, Radio New Zealand and Pac News for publishing incorrect facts of the recent death of a New Zealander, Hanz Christian in Port Vila.

"The latest reports on line from ABC Australia, Radio New Zealand and PAC NEWS are based on Detective Maryline George comments and she has provided them with the wrong facts and they are defamatory," he said.

"Firstly according to witnesses on the scene, the argument did not take place outside Planet 107 but at the ex CelloVila building next door. Hanz did not enter the club as suggested but went for a shell of kava. He was accompanied by a woman that night and some time later, her husband turned up in a bus he was driving around looking for her as she hadn't returned back from work yet for sometime," he added.

Detective George is trying to suggest that there was some big brawl that happened inside, leading outside.

"He was not just an innocent by passerby trying to stop a fight he knew nothing about as suggested by Autralian and New Zealand media, in fact he was the cause of it. He, the woman he was with that night and her husband got into the argument and it escalated to an assault on himself. He was not killed on premises either - he was assaulted at the building next door by the angry husband of the woman he was with but later died at the hospital, not immediately at the scene as reported," he said.

The family of the suspect have also confirmed to 107's newspaper, Vanuatu Times that this is not the first time as the victim was always after the woman and had been warned before.

Knight also said that the security guards next door stopped the fight and managed to help Hanz on a truck to the hospital but he died sometime later.

The suspect who is a bus driver has been apprehended by police and being charged with assault causing death.

"This incident could have happened anywhere and it was personal. It's the same everywhere when your partner or spouse is found with someone else, problems are bound to happen and in this case it was unfortunate. I don't think the husband intended to kill Hanz however the severity of the assault which stemmed from his anger, coupled with the victim's elderly age and conditon consequently resulted in him giving in," he said.