MOTOR’S STARTLING LEAP

Taranaki Daily News, 21 June 1928, Page 11

MOTOR’S STARTLING LEAP

ACCIDENT NEAR MANGOREI ONE MAN SERIOUSLY INJURED. BUS JUMPS SO FEET INTO SWAMP SIX HAVE FORTUNATE ESCAPE. One elderly man was severely injured and eight other people had miraculous escapes when one of Fowler’s service motors somersaulted sixty feet over a bank into a swamp near the Mangorei dairy factory early last night. The seriously injured man is John Lord, aged about 50 years, a commercial traveller, who lives at 19 Rugby Street, Merivale, Christchurch. He was on one of his usual biennial visits to New Plymouth. He was removed in the ambulance to the New Plymouth Hospital, suffering from what were thought to be severe injuries to his head and back, and this morning his condition was stated to be very serious.

The accident was stated to be due to tli© lights fusing, trie driver being unable to keep to the road in the darktiesA The ear, a large blue and grey Cadillac, which has been in Mr. James Fowler’s service for some time and is well known on the road, was on its usual evening run from Hawera to New Plymouth. Mr. Fowler himself was at the wheel. Owing, it is understood, to the lights having fused, he ran off the road goon after rounding the corner at the top of the hill on the south side of the Mangorei Factory. Over the unfenced bank the car plunged, and somersaulted about sixty feet In an almost eheer drop into the swamp below. It came to rest on the other side of the swamp from the road, in a position close to a belt of pine trees on Mr. Fred. Jordan’s property. The marvellous escape from death which the passengers had was apparent to anyone who visited the scene last night, The machine has been smashed to pieces. At the bottom of the deep gully on the side nearest the road the large luggage holder usually carried at the back now lies, quite detached from the main part of the machine, The latter is on the opposite side of the swamp, upside down, its four tyred wheels still apparently intact, but the main portion twisted and smashed almost beyond recognition, Several portions of the car are distributed in the surrounding clumps of fern and blackberry. Doctors, police and the hospital ambulance were sent for as soon as possible, and arrived within a short space of time. The passengers extricated themselves as best they could and most of them struggled up the steep bank to the road, their passage being rendered all the more difficult and uncomfortable by the drizzling and at times stormy rain that fell throughout the early part of the evening. Mr. Lord was found to be the most seriously injured, and had to be carried out to the ambulance some distance through Mr. Jordan’s property on the west side of the gully. Apart from Mr. Lord, Mr. Fowler was thought to have sustaijied some internal injury, and Mr. W. T. Wells, who was en route from Manaia to New Plymouth in order to attend a meeting of the harbour beard to-day, received minor injuries to his head. Amongst the passengers were, it is understood, three ladies, one of whom had a child in her arms. All escaped practically without a scratch.

The luggage was transferred to the road, and brought to town late in the evening.