A FATAL COLLISION

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 88, 14 April 1930, Page 12

A FATAL COLLISION

CHILDREN ESCAPE UNHURT

GORGE ROAD TRAGEDY

Mrs. Norman John Cook was killed outright, and her husband, a Johnsonville grocer, 46 years of age, was so bad<ly hurt that he died later at the Wellington Hospital, as the consequence of their five-seater touring car colliding with a sedan car in the Ngahauranga Gorge road early yesterday afternoon. Their two children —Joan, aged 0, and , William, aged 7—escaped unhurt. About 2.45 p.m. on Sunday, Mr. Cook was driving down the Gorge road, with his wife in the front seat beside him, and the two children in the back seat, when' at a right-angled bend some 200 yards beyond the intersection of the Newlands road with the Gorge, road, his car struck, on the right-hand side to the rear of the front mudguard, a five-seater sedan car coming up tho hill and driven by Mr. Alfred Edward Storey. It was a glancing blow, and the touring ear, being on tho outside of the road, went over the bank, a few feet from a' culvert, and landing on its right side, a complete wreck, in the stream some ten feet below.

Mrs. Cook's death was instantaneous, and Mr. Cook sustained a fracture of the base of his skull, broken ribs, and a broken breastbone. He was taken to the Wellington Hospital by the Free Ambulance, which was at tfnee summoned and speedily put in an appearance. Everything possible was done for him, but he succumbed to his injuries about 4.30 p.m. The wrecked touring car, without its wind screen and hood, and with half its steering wheel gone, was hauled back on to .the road by a break-down van, and was an object of great interest to the almost continuous streams of cars passing up and down the road.