Four Children Die When Raft Capsizes

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31583, 22 January 1968, Page 1

Four Children Die When Raft Capsizes

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, January 21. Four young Samoan children—two brothers, their sister and a cousin—were drowned as they played in a storm-water drainage pond in Bassant Avenue, Penrose, this evening.

The children were thrown into the water when a large wooden raft capsized. They were Diane Priscilla Purcell, aged nine, Isaac Konelio Purcell, aged seven, and Fred Maoama Purcell, aged six, the children of Mr and Mrs F. J. Purcell, of 17 Portman Road, Penrose; and their cousin, John Henry Suba, aged seven, son of Mr J. Suba, of 5 Edward Avenue, Otara. A police officer said later that the children, along with another sister and cousin, had been playing around the pond. The four drowned children were on a large wooden raft, which capsized, tossing the children into the water. RAN FOR HELP They had bobbed up and down a couple of times and disappeared. Seven-year-old Michelle Purcell, a cousin of the drowned Purcell children, ran about half a mile to her home in Fairfax Avenue to tell her parents. The first on the scene were Mr F. J. Purcell, father of three of the children, Mr H. J. Purcell, and Mr L. Stowers, all of whom were at Mr Purcell’s residence in Fairfax Avenue.

They waded into the pond, at times up to neck height, to retrieve the bodies. None of the children was alive when brought to the surface. Another Fairfax Avenue resident, Mrs S. Lebas, applied mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to one of the children, who was lying on the bank of the pond. RELATIVES SEARCH “It was terrible,” she said. “There were relatives of the children, wading around feeling for the bodies with their feet. “My children used to come down to play here until I stopped them." Two ambulances were quickly at the scene but were needed only to take the bodies to the mortuary. Displayed on a pumping station building above the pond are two notices. They both read: “This area is dangerous to children. Keep out.” The notices are signed by Mr I. A. Webb, a retired town

clerk of the One Tree Hill Borough Council. The One Tree Hill assistant borough engineer, Mr J. Howse, said tonight natural drainage from three boroughs —One Tree Hill, Ellerslie and Mount Wellington—seeped into the pond, which was known as the Walls Road Pond. The Auckland Regional Authority was preparing a feasibility study of drainage of the area. This envisaged a pipe outlet from the pond into the Manukau Harbour. Asked why a fence had not been erected around the pond, Mr Howse said this was difficult to do because the level of the water changed. At its highest level it took in a lot of private property, where the council could not put a fence. Any fence the council could erect would at times be covered by water. Mr Howse said the notices warning children to keep away had been in place for about two years.