By DARREL MAGER
A worried Whangarei mother made a frantic early morning call to police to report her family overdue from a trip south, just moments before ambulance officers found their bodies.
The two Order of St John officers had taken a patient with chest pains to hospital and were heading back to their Marsden Pt base at 5.10 am yesterday when they came across the grisly sight of a van that had smashed into a tree off State Highway 1.
They found three occupants already dead, but a 27-year-old woman, Mirinoa Thelma Tua - the daughter of the worried caller - was still breathing, although unconscious.
Northland St John senior operations manager Grant Pennycook said Mrs Tua was rushed to Whangarei Hospital with serious head and spinal injuries, but died shortly before 11 am.
The other victims were the woman's 27-year-old partner, Richard Heremaia, their son Waitai DeShoeza Tua-Heremaia, aged 20 months, and the driver, Jarod Mark Leslie Nicholls, 15.
Mr Heremaia and his baby son had been sleeping on squabs in the back of the van and none of the four had been wearing seatbelts.
All occupants came from the Whangarei suburb of Otangarei.
The police officer in charge of Northland traffic, Inspector Rex Knight, said: "Mirinoa's mum contacted the Whangarei police station just before 5 am, concerned because she was expecting her family back from down the line. It was shortly afterwards that they were discovered.
"It is a sad tragedy and it's possible that it could have been easily prevented had they all been wearing seatbelts."
The fatal smash comes just six days after three children and three adults from a Wanganui family were killed when their van collided with a 38-tonne meat truck in South Otago.
Mr Knight said yesterday's crash occurred on a straight stretch of State Highway 1 at Oakleigh, 15km south of Whangarei.
He said the northbound van appeared to have crossed the centre line, then left the road without braking, hit a large rock and smashed into the tree.
"We're following up whether it was driver fatigue, or something else," he said. "The van has been taken away for crash analysis and we've also taken blood samples so toxicology tests can be carried out to determine whether alcohol was a factor."
The highway was closed and traffic diverted while police conducted their scene examinations.
The crash took the year's road toll to 95.
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