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Home / Hawkes Bay Today

Watch your kids warns grandad

Hawkes Bay Today
21 Jun, 2005 12:28 AM3 mins to read

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Peter Ratana pauses for a second as he thinks about his dead granddaughter, six-year-old Iriaka Kawana.
A smile crosses his face as he remembers the bubbly Flaxmere girl who was outgoing and "got in everyone's face".
Later, he takes on a more sombre tone as he urges parents to watch out for
their children and remembers Iriaka, who was killed when a tree branch fell on her in Flaxmere's Lochain Park on March 16 this year.
"I have a pain, I have a deep hole in me now" he says, reflecting that he was only really getting to know Iriaka during the last two months of her life.
Mr Ratana was speaking yesterday following an inquest into Iriaka's death, at which Hastings Police Constable Ray Wyllie told of going to the park at about 6.50pm on March 16, and finding Iriaka crushed under a tree branch, with ambulance officers attempting unsuccessfully to resuscitate her.
Later investigations revealed a group of children playing on the branch of the 35-year-old gum tree, with two of them bouncing on it as Iriaka hung from it.
When the branch broke the other children were thrown clear, but Iriaka was pinned for 15 minutes while adults were found to lift the branch off her.
No evidence of decay was found at the point where the branch broke off the tree, and the Hastings District Council had received no complaints about it.
However "Summer Branch Drop", a condition where branches dropped off healthy trees at the end of a dry summer, was unable to be ruled out.
Mr Ratana said Iriaka's mother Kathleen Kawana, and her family were just coming into the "nice time of their lives." Mr Ratana said all the children in the family were climbers, saying it was "just a natural thing".
He added that some good had come from Iriaka's death, as it had alerted the council to the dangers of tree branches snapping, and he hoped adults would now keep a closer eye on their children.
"Children should be under constant observation, we need to take more interest."
Hastings coroner Peter Dennehy found Iriaka to have died from massive trauma to her chest and abdomen when the branch fell on her.
Mr Dennehy said Summer Branch Drop may have contributed to the branch breaking, but said it would have been compounded by the children bouncing up and down on it.
No-one knew how many times children had played on the branch during the time it had been in the park, Mr Dennehy said.
The Kawana family is trying to move on with their lives, and Mr Ratana now stresses the importance of treasuring family, and not waiting until death to say "I love you".

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