![A previous Rally for Palestine protest is shown in this file photo. Photo: ODT Files](https://www.odt.co.nz/sites/default/files/styles/odt_landscape_extra_large_4_3/public/story/2024/07/palestine_protest.jpg?itok=NCS3R5Cw)
Rally for Palestine organiser Rinad Tamimi said two men walked through the rally in the upper Octagon on Saturday and one of them was seen with a gun at about 2pm.
She did not witness the incident but other attendees at the event did.
‘‘It was just like a random person that happened to walk past, possibly a gang member or something that had a gun.
‘‘It would have happened so quickly that some people witnessed it and some people didn’t.’’
Usually the rally had police presence but this past Saturday there was none.
She thought it was a random incident and the rally was not targeted.
Organisers at the rally reported the incident to police.
A witness who was eating her lunch near the Robbie Burns statue saw a man shoving what looked like a gun into his bag.
‘‘There were two people standing there and one of them was a guy with heaps of face tattoos and he was shoving what looked like a sawn-off shotgun into his bag then he buggered off.’’
A police spokeswoman said it received a report a person briefly sighted with what may have been a firearm yesterday in the Octagon on Saturday afternoon.