BOY KILLED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 204, 29 August 1934, Page 8

BOY KILLED.

BIKE STRIKES TRAIN.

FATALITY AT NEW LYNN.

SECOND LAD "UNINJURED.

Fatal injuries were received by a 15-year-old boy, Ronald Hanniken, as the result of a bicycle on which he and another boy were riding striking a train at the Portage Road level crossing, New Lynn, at 11.40 this morning. The other la'd, Claude McLeod (14) escaped with a shaking. The bicycle on which the boys were riding was borrowed from another youth at the Titirangi golf course. With McLeod pedalling and Hanniken sitting on the bar of the machine, the boys set off down Portage Road towards Great North Road. Nearing the railway crossing the boys apparently noticed the Maungaturoto-Auckland niixed train approaching, for they stopped on the edge of the crossing. Under the impression that the full train had passed, the boys started off a<*ain, but saw too late that there were still several trucks to pass over .the crossing. McLeod tried desperately, to turn the bicycle in time to avoid a smash, but was unable to do so, the front of the machine striking the train. Hanniken, whose parents live at 15, Veronica Avenue,, apparently received the full force of the impact, his skull bein" fractured and his right leg broken in several places. He was dead when Dr Lindsay, arrived, and his body was taken to the morgue by St. John Ambulance. Hanniken was formerly a pupil at the Mount Albert Grammar School. The boy McLeod escaped injury, although he was severely shaken. The bicycle was wrecked. There- "were no eye-witnesses of the tragedy, although a , woman living nearby heard the train- whistle as it approached the crossing. The Portage Road crossing, although a fairly open one, has for years -been regarded as a dangerous one. It is at the top of a slight rise. Compulsory stop notices are placed on either side of the railway line, but there is no warning bell or "wig-wag." There is a railway signal on : the western side of the crossing.

Danger of the Crossing. "The crossing is probably the most dangerous in the district owing to its elevated nature," said Mr. Geo. Lawson, Mayor of New Lynn, in commenting on the tragedy. "It has been the scene of several other fatalities." The crossing, he added, had been the subject of many representations to the Railway Department by the local body' concerned during the past 15 years, but the Department's : reply had always been that there were more dangerous crossings in the country. The local authority had repeatedly asked that improvements should be made or that additional warning devices should be installed. A suggestion that had been made to the Department recently was that improvements at the crossing should be done by unemployed labour, but it had been turned down. . ■