Residents in a Tauranga neighbourhood say they are being terrorised by gangsters and unexplained explosions.
The neighbours have spoken out after the mysterious explosions, armed police raids, gang intimidation and domestic incidents centred around one property.
They have formed a neighbourhood support group and some are looking for somewhere else to live.
Police are at a loss to explain what caused the explosions.
The residents spoke out after explosions rocked the area on Sunday night.
The armed offenders squad raided a property on Monday morning for unrelated reasons and police charged a 34-year-old man with unlawfully possessing ammunition.
Armed police were called to the street last month after reports of a gun being fired, although it turned out be fireworks.
One neighbour, who did not want to be identified for safety reasons, said when they woke to the first bang on Sunday night "I thought that somebody's been shot''.
She and her flatmate were too scared to go out after 5pm after one of them was followed by someone from the property.
They were in the process of looking for somewhere else to live solely because of "that house''.
"Almost every night there's yelling and a woman screaming then it goes quiet. I've almost called the cops, oh, I don't know how many times,'' she said.
"I'm scared to call the cops in case they know it's us who called them.''
Another neighbour said Sunday night's explosions were the latest in a string of loud bangs coming from the house.
The first was about 10pm, and the second occurred while she was talking to the police on the phone.
The woman said it was the second time in a matter of weeks that she had called the police because of explosions.
She said she saw a man leave the same property carrying a gun.
The neighbour said people living nearby had become so concerned with the activities of their disruptive neighbours they had set up a neighbourhood support group.
"I was informed that ... they found a tuna bomb on the driveway. It's pretty frightening. People are feeling pretty vulnerable to say the least. It's altogether uncomfortable,'' she said.
"The explosions do create a sense of unease. [When they happen] we don't know what to attribute them to - a lot sound terribly like the characteristics of gunshots.''
Detective Senior Sergeant Greg Turner said police had been unable to identify the source of the explosions on Sunday night, nor had they been able to on the previous occasion last month.
"She's probably heard what other people have heard in the area overnight, which we never got to the bottom of, but were completely unrelated [to the AOS search the following morning],'' he said.
It was possible the blasts came from "tuna bombs'', or seal control bombs, which are small explosives used underwater to scare seals away from boats and scare tuna into nets.
- Sam Boyer and Kiri Gillespie of the Bay of Plenty Times
