ACCIDENTS

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26394, 12 April 1951, Page 8

ACCIDENTS

CHILD KILLED CAR RUNS INTO RIVER (New Zealand Press Association) NELSON, April 11. A "child was killed and a woman severely injured when a car left the road in the Wai-iti Valley this morning and ran down a 5 foot bank into the Wai-iti river. The car came to rest with its rear wheels on top of the bank and the front wheels in the river in water about 2 feet 6 inches deep. The child, Lois Jane McDonald, aged 16 months, could not be found after the accident and it was an hour before th* body was recovered from the water under the car, where it was held between the front axle and the oil sump. The car was driven by the child’s mother, Daisy Ellen McDonald, wife of Mr C. McDonald, a farm hand, of Wai-iti Valley. A passenger in the car was Mrs McDonald's sister, Miss Aina Sarah Stockbill, aged 43, of Hawarden, North Canterbury, who suffered head injuries and shock. She was admitted to the Nelson Hospital. Mrs McDonald’s 4-year-old son, who received cuts to the face, was also admitted to hospital. The driver of the car escaped with shock.

SURVEYOR KILLED BY ELECTRIC SHOCK

STEEL TAPE TOUCHES POWER LINE

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, April 11. A young surveyor was killed by an electric shock at Fairburn, six miles from Kaitaia, this afternoon, when his steel measuring tape touched a power line carrying 11,000 volts. He was Neil Graham Dickel, a single man, of Kaitaia.

Mr Dickel and his assistant, Mr Frank Hanlon, of Kaitaia, were surveying a gully on a property at Fairbum when the accident occurred. They were measuring across the gully at right angles to the power line, which runs from a spur to the bottom of the gully. Standing on top of a hiH, Mr Dickel was holding one end of the steel tape and Mr Hanlon was holding the other some distance away. When the tape became taut it touched the power line, and Mr Dickel was killed instantly. Mr Hanlon suffered bums, but was able to go for assistance. Mr Dickel came from Dunedin recently and worked for a time in Whangarei before going into business on his account at Kaitaia.