Son crushed in farm crash

Press, 10 June 1977, Page 1

Son crushed in farm crash

A man ran several miles for help yesterday after his son was killed in a LandRover accident on a remote North Canterbury sheep

station. The youth killed was Stuart Vincent Macdonald, aged IS, of Eskhead. about 30 miles west of Waikari.

He was thrown out and crushed as the four-wheel-drive vehicle rolled 30m

down a steep slope from an access track on the station.

His father, Mr Neil Macdonald, the station manager, ran at least four miles to a musterers’ hut to raise the alarm.

Mr Macdonald and a station worker, Michael Warren, aged 19, escaped the crash with leg injuries, lacerations, and shock. They were rescued by an

R.N.Z.A.F. Iroquois helicopter and flown to Christchurch.

Both were admitted to the Christchurch Hospital, where they were reported in a satisfactory condition

last evening. The accident occurred after 9 a.m. but it was 1.30 p.m. before the helicopter touched down in Hagley Park. The three had taken the Land-Rover to muster sheep. Constable G. N. Gear, the policeman at Waikari, said the vehicle had been travelling up a very steep grade w'hen a rear wheel slipped over the bank.

“Luckily, it stopped halfway down the slope; otherwise it would have ended up in the Esk River,” Constable Gear said.