Engine driver ‘not guilty’

Press, 28 February 1981, Page 6

Engine driver ‘not guilty’

PA Wellington A cheer came from the public gallery in the High Court at Wellington this week when a not guilty verdict was announced in the trial of an engine driver, charged with manslaughter. The charge arose from a fatal railway accident at the Wellington railway yards on March 24 last year when a shunting engine collided with a commuter train from Porirua. Two passengers in the train were killed and a number of others injured. There was a full public gallery of mainly railway workers for most of the hearing. Kevin Charles Smith, aged 25, an engine driver, wat charged that by driving a shunting engine through a

stop signal of two red lights he omitted to perform or observe a legal duty under the Crimes Act and thereby killed Ernest Bennett Goodwin. Smitha sserted that he had been- given a “slow speed” signal which entitled him to proceed on to the track ol the oncoming train and that the accident was caused by a malfunction of the signalling system. The trial occupied nine days much of which was taken up by technical evidence about the signalling system. The jury took 2{ hours to return a verdict of not guilty. Mr Justice Hardie Boyes, said he considered it an “entirely sensible and proper verdict and no reflection on other people.”