Thomas Armstrong was doing the right thing by not drinking and driving.
But celebration turned to tragedy for the young partygoer when he was struck by three separate vehicles and killed as he walked home after a company Christmas party.
Mr Armstrong, aged 22, was walking home along Mangateretere Road early on Saturday morning when he was hit by the first of the three vehicles, Hastings police Sergeant Brent Greville said.
"He was walking home ... about 3am, when he was clipped by a van," Mr Greville said.
"The driver does not appear to have been at fault."
Deeply shocked, the driver of the van pulled over.
Seconds later, a young couple in a car also narrowly avoided hitting Mr Armstrong as he lay unmoving on the road.
"The boyfriend had to swerve because he suddenly saw something on the edge of the road," a relative of one of the car's occupants said today.
"They saw a van parked at the side of the road - and something else.
"(The young woman) said: 'I think it's a body'."
The couple stopped to help, but before they had time to act, two more vehicles hit the young man.
The drivers of the vehicles that hit Mr Armstrong were "shocked; very distraught", Mr Greville said, as were the others who witnessed the tragedy. He warned people walking home in poorly-lit rural areas to be careful and walk facing oncoming traffic.
Today there was an empty space outside Progressive Meats Kelcold, where Mr Armstrong always ate his lunch and smoked his 9am and 2pm cigarettes.
"He was a great one for routine, he always sat in the same place and now he's not there," manager Wayne Wyeth said.
Mr Armstrong had moved from Carterton to live with his grandparents in Clive. Today, the team remembered a painfully shy young man who began work at the plant a year ago.
"At first he was scared to death of the computer, but he developed - you only had to show him once - and in the end he knew more about it than anyone else on the staff.
"Anything you asked of him, Thomas would do. He was totally reliable."
In September last year, 18-year-old Brendan Palmer was killed walking from Havelock North to Hastings in the early hours of the morning. In June 2004, the body of 20-year-old Hastings man Aston Kawana was found in a ditch after being hit on the way home from a party.
TOP STORY: Walk home ends in tragedy
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