Boy falls victim to slip on hall

Press, 21 December 1976, Page 1

Boy falls victim to slip on hall

The three-year-old boy killed when a slip crashed through the back wall of a Girl Guide centre, in Silverstream Road, Crofton Downs, was Guy Redfern-Hardisty, the son of one of three adults at the centre 1 with 15 Miramar brownies. The group went to the centre on Saturday for a short holiday arid was trapped in the building when a creek separating it from Silverstream Road

flooded yesterday morning. About 12.15 p.m. a big area of the hillside slipped over a low retaining wall and crashed into a meeting hall on the upper floor of the centre. The mud almost filled the hall and carried pieces of the demolished back wall into the room. Guy was buried in the debris, but the rest of the group escaped unhurt.

Firemen and about half a dozen neighbours used their hands or any tools they could find to clear away mud and other debris. But it took the rescuers about an hour to reach the boy, and attempts at re-

suscitation were unsuccessful. One of the neighbours who helped in the rescue, Gavin Drew, aged 23, last evening praised the tenacity of the firemen. But with the debris filling most of the room and the exact location of the child unknown, their task was hopeless, he said. The police say that an elderly man collapsed and died when houses in the suburb of Ngaio were evacuated during the floods. No further details were available but the death appeared to lie from natural causes, said Inspector P. Byrne.