Peninsula car crash claims life

Press, 27 December 1985, Page 5

Peninsula car crash claims life

A young North Canterbury woman, killed in a car accident near Little River early yesterday, was one of the nine road fatalities so far this Christmas.

She was Elizabeth Anne Page, aged 22, of Springbank Road, Rangiora. The accident happened about 1 a.m. on the Western Valley Road between Little River and Port Levy. She was a passenger in the car which failed to take a bend on the shingle road and plunged down an 18-metre bank.

Miss Page was thrown clear of the car but was dead on arrival at hospital. Three other occupants of the car were taken to hospital and were treated and discharged. The Press Association reported that two men died in a head-on collision near Tauranga yesterday. Four other people were injured in the 6.30 a.m. collision between a. station waggon and a van on State Highway 2 near Te Puna.

Those’ killed were Eugene Cameron, aged 21, of ' Blockhouse Bay, Auckland; and Paul Joseph Chapman, aged 23, of Currumbon, Queensland.

Both were passengers in the station waggon. One man was killed on impact and the other died two hours later in Tauranga Hospital.

The first death of the holiday period happened early on Wednesday when a farm cadet, Keith Ross Sawyers, aged 18, was struck by a car in Westport. He is believed to have been lying in the middle of the road.

In the first multi-death accident, two women and a man died in a two-car, head-on collision south of Waihola on State highway 1

on Wednesday. They were Rosemary Priscilla Tamepo, aged 34, of Lawrence; and Christopher William Freeth, aged 25, believed to be the driver of one of the cars.

The police were last evening still trying to trace the next-of-kin of a Welsh woman, aged 32, a passenger in Mr Freeth’s car, who was also killed in the crash. Mr Tai Tamepo, the husband of the dead woman, is seriously ill in Dunedin Hospital with abdominal, head and leg injuries. The two cars collided about I.skm south of Waihola, south of Dunedin, at 9.55 p.m. A woman passenger died after a crash on the Haywards Hill road near Pauatahanui at 6.45 p.m. last evening. The driver of the car was seriously injured and taken to Hutt Hospital, the police said. A 47-year-old man died yesterday in Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital after an accident in the early hours of Christmas Day. The Otahuhu police said the man was a passenger in a car which ran off the road and into a ditch at Waitoa, near Morrinsville.

The Ministry of Transport’s summary of drivers’ habits so far this holiday has been too fast, too close.’ Assistant Chief Traffic Superintendent Henry Gore said yesterday that on Christmas Eve he flew over some main highways as an observer. “Near Blenheim on State highway 1 I saw how badly some drivers were behaving,” he said. “It was amazing — there were clumps of six or more vehicles, all of them following right up the boot of the car in front. Behind was a space of several hundred metres, then another clump.”