RANGIOTU TRAGEDY

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 24, 29 January 1926, Page 8

RANGIOTU TRAGEDY

INQUIRY RESUMED.

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PALMERSTON N., This Day. The adjourned inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the fatality at Bangiotu road bridge on the night of 16th August; last, whereby Mrs. C. H. Withers and her two sons lost their lives through the car in which they were travelling crashing through the. picket fence and plunging down the steep bank into the Oroua River, was resumed at the Courthouse this morning. The bodies- of the 'two boys, Leonard Peri (5) and Jack Herbert (13) were found later, but the body of Mrs. Withers has not been discovered.

Charles Herbert Withers gave evidence that on the night of the fatality he was returning to Palraeriton by car accompanied by hji wife and children. i When approaching the Bangiotu Bridge, travelling at about fifteen miles per hour, his headlights picked up the railway bridge,, about half a chain from the road bridge. Continuing on in the belief,that the first-named structure, was the road bridge, he suddenly perceived a picket fence in front of the car. He immediately applied the brakes, but was too near the fence to stop the car, and, the fence failing to stop the vehicle, it plunged over into the river. His wife and boys were in the back seat. He made endeavours to locate them without success. The next thing he remembered was freeing himself an i being pulled out of the river. Another witness related having * somewhat similar experience when driving a car one night previously, just pulling up with the headlights touching the palings of the' fence. Consequently on the night of the accident, when he also was driving his car ahead of the ill-fated one (he had been accompanying Withers), he had been on the look-out for the proper approach to the bridge. Since the accident the approach had been made much safer.

The Coroner returned a verdict that the, two boys were accidentally drowned, the accident apparently being due to an error of judgment on the part of Withers in mistaking the approach to the railway bridge for that of the traffic bridge. Further, at the time of the accident there was an.element of danger at the locality. It was satisfactory to note from the evidence that steps had been taken to prevent the recurrence of such accident "