Three Kaitaia College Students were lucky to escape relatively unharmed after their car flipped into Awanui River yesterday.
Three Kaitaia College Students were lucky to escape relatively unharmed after their car flipped into Awanui River yesterday.
Luck was riding with three teenagers who found themselves upside down in a semi-submerged car in the Awanui River, off Gills Rd, west of Kaitaia.
The three Kaitaia College students, all aged 17, managed to get themselves out of the car when it went in yesterday afternoon but were stillclinging to it, unable to climb the bank, when the first Kaitaia Fire Brigade appliance arrived.
One of the crew, Eddie Bellas, went into the water to help them up to the road, where they were treated by a St John ambulance crew before being taken to Kaitaia Hospital.
All three, two boys and a girl, were described as suffering minor injuries.
They were lucky not only to have survived all but unscathed, a police spokesman said, but that anyone even knew they were there, well out of sight of the road. Judi Hilton-Jones, who lives immediately opposite the scene, said she had taken a "rare" day off work, and just happened to see the car become airborne and disappear over the bank.
"No one would have known they were there if I hadn't been at home and seen them," she said.
According to the police the teenagers were returning to Kaitaia after travelling to Awanui for lunch.
The female driver, who had a restricted licence and should not have been carrying passengers, had blamed a pothole for her losing control, although the officer thought inexperience and possibly speed were a more likely explanation.
