CRUSHED BY BUS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 49, 27 February 1935, Page 8

CRUSHED BY BUS.

MAORI SCHOOLGIRL KILLED

FALL ON TO ROADWAY

(By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) ROTORUA, this day.

A distressing tragedy took place on the main Rotorua-Cambridge Road, about a mile north of the rarukonga railway station crossing, shortly before 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon, when a Maori girl," Tekai l'cne Karakn, aged II rears, fell out of a bus in which she "was returning homo from t'ae Mamaku School and was killed. Apparently a rear wheel of the bus passed over her

IC j\V company with about 30 other children living along the loute between Tarukenga and Uamaku, the child, a pupil of the Mamaku School, was on her way home in a bus owned and driven by Mr. Charles J. Francis, or Kotorua, \vlio was under contract to the Education Department. Yesterday afternoon the bus left Mamaku at about 3.20 to convey the children from the school to their homes. As usual, a number of slops were made along the route between Mamaku and the scene of the tragedy to enable various children to alight, and it was when the vehicle was gaining speed after one of these stops that the driver noticed the child fall out through the doorway, although when he had started the vehicle immediately before the entrance had been clear. Mr. Francis endeavoured to graep the girl a* she fell, but was unsuccessful. He immediately stopped his vehicle and went back to find the girl lying on the roadway, with her head terribly injured. With the assistance of si passing motorist he sent a call to the police and a doctor at Rotorna, but when Dr. Walker and a nurse arrived with an ambulance soon afterwards it was found tiiat the child was dead. The body wsis taken to the morgue at Kotorua. The parents of the child live at Turukengii. where the father. Mr. William Karaka, employed ;i* a buslimau.