Driveway death haunts dad

Vaimoana Mafi's family, Silua Mafi, 8, Danny Mafi, Stanley Mafi, 3, and Lope Mafi. Photo / Doug Sherring

Beware the danger to young children, grieving father warns parents.

Every day before work Auckland dad Danny Mafi drives to his baby daughter's grave to "see her and to say a prayer".

Eighteen-month-old Vaimoana Mafi died two weeks ago after she was accidentally knocked over in her family driveway in Massey Rd, Mangere.

Getting into the car is hard enough for the loving dad. He was behind the wheel when Vaimoana, his "baby girl", was hit.

"It is hard to get in the car and drive. I think about it you know. I lose it," Mafi told the Herald on Sunday.

"I go to see her every day. Every day I get up at 5am to go and see her at her grave before I go to work."

Mafi and his wife, Lope, were packing up their Mangere home to move to a bigger house, with Vaimoana, 8-year-old Silua and 3-year-old Stanley when the 18-month-old was hit.

Mafi was backing his ute to move furniture and didn't see Vaimoana playing on the driveway.

The distraught father held his seriously injured baby until the ambulance arrived. She was taken to Middlemore Hospital but died from her injuries the next night.

Through tears Mafi said the family was trying to focus on happy memories and tried not to think of "that terrible day". But he also wants people to hear his story.

He wants people to know his daughter was happy and loved; that the day before she died she was laughing and playing at a playgroup Christmas party; that they had just bought her a new bike for Christmas.

He wants people to know how quickly everything can change.

Vaimoana is one of four children to be fatally run over in their own driveway in the past eight months.

A month ago 3-year-old Valentina Grace Warren was killed by a vehicle in her Te Atatu, West Auckland, driveway. In March, toddler Mila Tamihana was found in her Massey driveway with fatal injuries after being hit by a car. A month earlier 23-month-old Te Manawa Whetuki Renata died after being hit by a vehicle in the driveway of his Papatoetoe, South Auckland, home.

Mafi wants his daughter's to be the last such death. "I want to talk, to tell people so they are more aware; so they know this can happen."

Mafi said people asked, "'How can this happen? You are caring parents, you are always holding the children, caring for them'. We don't know how, we always watch where the children are. But this happened."

Mafi said burying his daughter had devastated the close-knit Tongan family. After Vaimoana's funeral, when all the extended family and friends had left, the dead girl's nearest and dearest lay on the floor of their new home and cried.

"It was just us and we just lay there together on the mats and looked at her photos all over the wall," Mafi said. "We all just lay there together and cried."

Mafi said in the coming months there would be counselling and a lot of talking with the church and friends.

"We need help to get through this and we need to keep talking about her," he said.