Cruel twist of fate ends young life near school

By PATRICK GOWER

Logan Patterson got up early yesterday morning. The 10-year-old had homework to finish before heading off to Ngahinapouri School.

Just over an hour later he was dead.

He was just 50 metres from the school when the back left wheel of a passing car flew from the vehicle, hitting Logan in the chest.

The force was so great it flung Logan into the driveway of the house he was passing. He died instantly.

Nearby workmen tried unsuccessfully to revive him.

His 150 schoolmates arrived at the tiny Waikato primary school to see a police cordon.

Witnesses said the car involved - a white Mazda 808 - had scraped and sparked along the highway on its axle before grinding to a halt almost 100m down the road.

Its four young occupants emerged shaken but unhurt.

They had left Te Kuiti and were heading north to Auckland when the wheel fell off and skittled across the road, hitting Logan and narrowly missing 67-year-old pedestrian Ron Lane, who was walking just a few steps behind him.

Police are now looking at whether the car had been illegally modified.

They would not say if the car was registered and warranted, but have seized the vehicle and begun an inspection into its roadworthiness. It had been "lowered" and its regulation wheels replaced with mags.

Logan got out of bed at 6.30 am to finish off some homework before heading to school along the footpath through Ngahinapouri, a tiny rural Waikato settlement west of Te Awamutu, where his parents, Colin and Kerry Patterson, have just moved onto a lifestyle block. He was just 700m from home when he was struck down and killed.

Mr Lane was walking his Jack Russell terrier, Toby, when he noticed the wheel coming away from the Mazda as it travelled through the 70 km/h zone past the school.

"Then the two parted, and the wheel hit the lad. It was just that quick. A second either way and the lad would have been fine."

The Ngahinapouri community and the school's students and staff were yesterday reeling from the loss, said principal Wayne Asplin. Victim Support workers spent most of the day at the school after many children had walked past the police cordon while police closed the road and removed Logan's body.

The family have placed a bunch of flowers at the accident scene, with a card which reads: "Logan Forever - Mummy, Daddy, Amelia, Nanny."

Lifetime family friend Arnold Koppens spoke on behalf of the Pattersons and said "Logie" was a great kid.

"He was a damn good-looking kid, and at 10 years old girls were still 'yuck' to him, but they were already lining him up," he said.

"He was such a cheeky and headstrong young fellow - we've been saying if only he had stayed behind and argued with his mother or something, then he would still be here."

Mr Koppens said that since moving with his parents to Ngahinapouri, Logan had added motocross to a list of hobbies that consisted mainly of "just Gameboy, Nintendo and food."

"It is such a shame that at 10 years old the little guy hasn't had the opportunity of life."

The four occupants of the car were taken by police to Hamilton's Dinsdale police station and interviewed. The driver was then taken to the main station for further interviews.

Inspector Leo Tooman, Waikato strategic traffic manager, would not comment on the roadworthiness of the car until it had been fully inspected, but said: "It has certainly been modified, or what they call 'lowered'. It is whether those modifications were actually certified modifications [that] is now the subject of our investigation."

Cars are "lowered" by cutting and rewiring their suspension so the chassis rides lower to the ground. It is supposedly done to improve control - making "shopping cars" handle better at high speeds - but it is mainly done for the look and actually makes control more difficult.