Crash After Flash

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31881, 8 January 1969, Page 20

Crash After Flash

(N.Z. Press Association) TAURANGA, Jan. 7. A police car ran off the road and struck a shop front while on the way to investigate a report that a burglar alarm was sounding in a shop at Central Parade, Mount Maunganui, at the height of the thunderstorm about 2.40 this morning. One constable was injured and both the shop and the car were severely damaged. When the alarm report was received at the Mount

Maunganui police station at 2.30 a.m., two patrol cars, one containing Detective E. T. Flavell and the other Constables M. Cummins and J. Donald, left to investigate. At the moment of a flash of lightning, Constable Donald’s car left the road and veered across the footpath, knocking a letter-box off a telegraph pole, then striking the front ot a pie shop and bakery and smashing a display window and the concrete wall beneath it. Torrents of rain were falling, the power was off.

and the street was In darkness. Constable Donald suffered a severe cut above the left eye, in which stitches were later inserted at the Tauranga Hospital. The car was towed away. A man who was standing near the shop at the time said there was a brilliantflash of lightning, followed by a loud thunderclap, and at the same time the police car, which was not travelling fast, ran off the road. The burglar report has been listed as a false alarm.