Verdicts due today in manslaughter trial

Press, 8 July 1983, Page 9

Verdicts due today in manslaughter trial

Evidence was completed in the trial of two Americans from Operation Deep Freeze on a joint charge of manslaughter in the High Court yesterday. Counsel will give final addresses this morning and Mr Justice Cook will sum up for the jury. Elizabeth Mary Piwoski, aged 21, an electronics technician, and Virgil Joseph Smith, aged 25, an electrician, have pleaded not guilty to alternative charges of the manslaughter of Kresimir Peter Ivos, aged 17, or to driving at a dangerous

speed and causing his death.

The Crown alleges that Piwoski and Smith were racing powerful American cars on Memorial Avenue on the evening of August 17, 1982, when the Mercury Cougar driven by Piwoski collided with the rear of a Mini car driven by Mrs Ivanka Ivos, the mother of the death youth.

The defence was that the accident was caused by the Mini changing lanes into the path of the Cougar. Messrs C. B. Atkinson, Q.C., and A. M. Mclntosh

appear for the Crown, Mr B. P. Henry and Miss N. E. McGowan, of Auckland, for Piwoski, and Mr P. D. Lublow for Smith. The Crown called 26 witnesses. Mr Henry called two witnesses for Piwoski, they being Denise Dillon Fife, of Operation Deep Freeze, who took photographs at the scene of the fatal accident, and Peter Terrence McCoombes, a traffic engineer, of Johnsonville.

Mr Lublow elected to call no evidence on behalf of Smith.