Dad discovers son's body two days after crash

File photo.

The personal tragedies behind the Easter road toll continue to unfold with the latest revelation that the body of a teenager killed in a car crash near Gisborne was discovered by his father.

Blair Sainsbury, 17, was last seen on Sunday night at the Tiniroto Easter Game Hunt, but his empty car was not found until yesterday, two days later, 80m down a bank on Tiniroto Rd, the inland road between Gisborne and Wairoa.

It appeared he might have briefly survived the crash and wandered off, said acting Senior Sergeant Trent Higgs of Gisborne police.

By chance his father Guy Sainsbury came across a group of people who had seen the vehicle, and decided to look around that area himself.

"His father found his boy some metres from the vehicle," Mr Higgs said.

Blair had been with his father at Tiniroto on Sunday night before he left for Gisborne, Mr Higgs said.

Early indications were that Blair was not wearing a seat belt when he crashed.

It was a very distressing situation for the family and the community, Mr Higgs said.

Blair's death brought the national Easter road toll to 11 - the worst in 17 years.

Another road tragedy saw the parents of a six-month-old Kalaisha Matangireia Princess Hale not informed of her death until they began recovering in hospital.

Kalaisha died in Auckland's Starship Hospital on Sunday following an horrific three-car crash in the eastern Bay of Plenty the day before.

Her parents, Ricky, 27, and Katerina, 21, both suffered serious injuries and remain in a stable condition in Tauranga Hospital, the New Zealand Herald reported.

Police are slowly releasing more of the names of Easter victims as their next of kin are informed.

Fifty-one-year-old Cathryn May Carr's life support was turned off at on Monday after she was critically injured when a car hit her bicycle from behind on Old West Coast Rd, Christchurch, on Saturday.

Abdullah Aldousari, 19, was the front seat passenger killed when the Toyota Camry he was in tried to overtake a truck and collided with an oncoming Mitsubishi on the Desert Road on Sunday.

Mr Aldousari, from Kuwait, was living and studying in Auckland. The driver of the Toyota, also 19 and from Kuwait, is in a critical condition in Waikato Hospital.

The front seat passenger of the Mitsubishi was earlier named as Haina Gladys Stewart, 48, from Paekakariki.

The driver, her 49-year-old husband, was seriously injured and is now in a stable condition in Palmerston North hospital.

In another double fatality on Sunday, Auckland motorcyclist Steven Gorrie, 38, was killed in a crash on State Highway 1 in the Dome Valley north of Warkworth. The Japanese man riding as his pillion passenger is yet to be named.

- NZPA