Crash victim lies abandoned 10 hours

Press, 12 September 1988, Page 1

Crash victim lies abandoned 10 hours

By

NIGEL MALTHUS

A woman pillion passenger lay dead or dying for up to 10 hours after a motor-cycle crash near Belfast went unreported by the machine’s rider.

Christchurch police said the crash happened about midnight on Saturday, on Coutts Island Road.

It went unreported until about 10 a.m., when the woman’s body and the motor-cycle were discovered by. a farm worker.

There was no sign of the rider, and late last evening police were still “making inquiries in that direction,” said Senior-Sergeant Rob Pope.

He said the police had spoken to the owner of the motor-cycle, and a number of other people who “knew the bike.”

He would npt say, however, whether the owner was thought to have been the rider at the time of the crash.

The woman, aged 28, had been

identified but her name was not yet available. Senior-Sergeant Pope said she died of head injuries.. She was thought to have died “reasonably quickly, if not instantly,” although that would not be confirmed until a post-mortem examination, to be performed today. Senior-Sergeant Pope would not give details of how the crash happened. The police were still reconstructing the sequence of events, he said.