THREE MEN KILLED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 December 1938, Page 4

THREE MEN KILLED

SERIOUS MOTOR ACCIDENT IN BAY OF PLENTY CAR PLUNGES OVER CLIFF. DRIVER OF VEHICLE INJURED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, December 22. Three Public Works employees were killed and the driver injured when the motor-car in which they were travelling left the road and plunged several hundred feet over the cliff at Little Awanui Hill, Maeranui, about 15 miles from Opotiki on the Gisborne highway tonight. Those killed are:— Charles Norden. George Ashley. Thomas Hughes. The driver, whose name in Kitchener. received a fractured arm. The men were travelling into Opotiki for their holidays from the public works' camp near Omaio. The twoseater car in which they were travelling left the road at a point where it skirts an almost perpendicular cliff about 500 feet down to the sea beach. Apparently the car plunged down 300 feet and was caught in a tree. The three men who were killed were flung out as the car rolled down. A man, named Dods, and his wife were driving near the top of the hill when they saw a man crawling up toward the road. They took him to a Public Works Department camp in Maeranui and from there he was taken by car to the Opotiki hospital where his condition is reported to be not serious. Meanwhile the camp foreman, Mr W. Nelson, and 12 men went to the scene of the tragedy and with the use (if long ropes were able to bring the bodies back to the road. The police were notified and Sergeant J. Isbister and Dr. H. J. Mail, medical superintendent of the Opotiki hospital, hurried to the scene but the men were dead when they arrived. The bodies were later brought to Opotiki.