Brighton man in holiday road toll

Press, 23 October 1989, Page 7

Brighton man in holiday road toll

By

BARRY CLARKE

and PA

An elderly New Brighton man is among four people killed on New Zealand roads so far this Labour Day week-end.

He was: Jan Holtslagg, aged 64, retired. He was hit by a vehicle at the intersection of Keppel Street and Hawke Street, New Brighton, on Saturday at 9 p.m. He was taken to Christchurch Hospital with serious injuries and died yesterday morning.

The Ministry of Transport is appealing for witnesses, particularly the driver of a white Transit van who is believed to have seen the accident. Two men died and one was seriously injured in a head-on collision 2km north of Eketahuna about 10 p.m. on Saturday.

The dead were Michael Gerard McMillan, aged 24, of Pukerua Bay, and Shane Johns, aged 23, of Lower Hutt.

The Masterton police said the car they were travelling in hit a bridge on State highway 2 before crashing into another car. A passenger, Jason Goff, aged 22, of Masterton, was first taken to Masterton Hospital and then ferried to Wellington Hospital’s intensive care unit by helicopter.

He remained in a serious condition last evening. The occupants of the second car, a man and a woman in their 20s and a

three-year-old child, were treated at Masterton Hospital for minor injuries. In Auckland a 33-year-old man died when the car he was driving went out of control and hit a bridge barrier on State highway 2 near the bottom of Bombay Hill on Saturday afternoon.

He was Kevin Edward Oades of Howick. His wife, the only passenger in the car, was slightly injured. In Christchurch, traffic officers have been busy since the holiday period started on Friday at 4 p.m. attending 25 accidents.

On Friday and Saturday evening and early Sunday morning, 328 motorists were stopped by checkpoints set up around the city. Six drivers breathtested were negative. Thirty drivers were caught drink-driving over the legal limit by routine patrols. The relatively low numbers of drinking drivers was reflected by fewer traffic officers on the roads this week-end, said Traffic Senior Sergeant Geoff Scott. The M.O.T. did not recall any extra officers for the blitz as part of a costcutting measure.