SHOCKING FATALITY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3800, 26 August 1936, Page 4

SHOCKING FATALITY

AT TE KAWA QUARRY. WELL-KNOWN FARMER CRUSHED. While working in the Te Kawa quarry on Monday afternoon a well known Te Mawhai farmer, Mr Thomas Charles Oates, aged 65 years, was so terribly crushed that he expired an hour or so later. It appears that Mr Oates had been engaged at the quarries for some weeks, and his particular duty on Monday was the handling and loading of railway trucks at the hopper of the crushing bins. He is believed to Lave jumped down on the line—there is a private siding in connection with the Main Trunk railway line—to clear some stones away, and the slowlymoving truck bumped into him, causing him to lose his balance, and the wheel ot the truck passed over the lower part of the body and left leg, and then over the right leg, terribly mangling them. Help was quickly at band and he was released from the entanglement,' and a doctor hurried out from Te Awamutu. Mr Oates was conscious all the time, though suffering extreme pain, and he managed to withstand the car journey into a Te Awamutu private hospital, but the shock and haemorrhage was too great and he died between 5 and 5.30 p.m. An Inquest was opened before Mr G. A. Empson, Coroner, yesterday morning, when evidence of identification was given and the further hearing adjourned sine die. Mr Oates was a man held in high esteem in the district, and though he took little or no part in public affairs he was recognised as an upright, honest man, whose opinions were always worth listening to. He is survived by a widow and grown-up family, to whom will be extended very sincere sympathy in their bereavement, especially under such tragic circumstances.

Mr Oates was born at Clune, Victoria, sixty-five years ago, and came to New Zealand when he was thirtythree years of age. He had resided at Te Mawhai for about 234 years. The funeral takes place this after noon, Interment being .at the Te Awainutu public cemetery. Another fatality occurred at the Te Kawa quarry a little more than a year ago—on Wednesday, July 10th — when a man named George Macky was fatally crushed while piloting a rake of trucks from the railway line to the crusher. At the inquest it was suggested that deceased was standing on the brake of a truck, and when near the crusher his foot slipped, and he was caught between the crusher building wall and the track. The Coroner returned a verdict of accidental death, and in his comments ) suggested that more room should be provided "between the crusher wall and trucks, and added that the fact that no serious accident bad occurred In the previous six years or so indicated that generally the business was well managed.