KEY POINTS:
Police have still not been able to locate the truck driver of a logging truck which struck and killed a 13-year-old girl outside her Mount Maunganui school.
Breeze Brunton, of Welcome Bay, Tauranga, was clipped by a logging truck while crossing the road to Mount Maunganui College on
Wednesday.
The logging truck did not stop but police said it was possible that the driver may have been unaware he had hit the girl.
Breeze's body is lying in state at Pikitu, her mother's marae, ahead of her funeral tomorrow.
Tauranga police Senior Sergeant Ian Campion said police had been talking to a number of drivers and companies, but had still not located the driver of the truck that hit her.
Reports of police talking to the driver who hit the girl were incorrect, he said.
"At this stage we are yet to locate the vehicle and the driver," he said.
The focus of the inquiry today was to obtain additional CCTV security footage from around where the accident happened, Mr Campion said.
Police are asking truck drivers who were on Maunganui Rd between 7.45am and 8.15am to come forward.
Outside Mt Maunganui College today, just metres from the crash scene, flowers and tributes surround a wooden cross with the words: "Rest in peace Breeze."
The college is in mourning - many students witnessed the accident's aftermath while travelling on a bus that arrived at the school just as Breeze was killed.
A 60-seater bus today carried students and staff to the marae where Breeze's body is lying.
In preparation for the tangi, school mates created an A3-sized card.
As the black paint dried on their portrait, it was especially hard for 13-year-old Abraham Webster - who sketched the drawing of Breeze. His bus had pulled up at the school gates just as the accident happened on Wednesday morning.
He was sitting in the back of the bus - which had come from Papamoa - admiring the Nissan Skyline car belonging to Breeze's brother.
Breeze's eldest brother had just dropped her off across the road, along with their other brother who is in Year 10 at Mount Maunganui College.
Abraham opened his mouth to tell his mate to "check out that car" but never got the words out.
A red logging truck heading towards Mount Maunganui drove past, and in that moment everything changed.
"I saw it, but I wished I hadn't," he told the Bay of Plenty Times.
Breeze, he said, went to step over the white line to cross the road. As she leaned forward the last bolster bar on the back of the truck collided with the side of her head, Abraham said.
"She looked left and when she looked right, it was in her face," he said.
Abraham said his 13-year-old school mate was drawn into the truck. She landed at the back of her brother's car as he went to pull away from the road. He stopped when he realised something had happened.
Both brothers rushed to her aid, with her younger brother reportedly pulling her off the road away from oncoming traffic.
On the bus students were crying, Abraham said.
Two teachers, both surf lifeguards and trained paramedics, were among the first to the scene.
The teachers and students who witnessed what happened, have been offered counselling by the school and the Ministry of Education trauma response team.
Principal Terry Collett said speeding vehicles outside the college had always been a problem.
The school has been fighting to have the 70km/h speed limit outside on the busy road reduced to 50km/h.
"Several times we have applied to the council to have this reduced and we get told because there are no houses on the other side of the road they can't reduce it."
Yesterday, her teacher Pat Mallon and classmates described Breeze as "funny and always happy, and laughing". She was "brainy" they said, and always had the answers.
Among the personal messages written in the card for Breeze, Te Tau Tuanau, 14, wrote his friend would be "forever young" and Carlin Wade, 13, said despite her friends having to "live with the pain" she would never be forgotten.
Carlin said he and fellow students had spent the past two days trying to focus on class work.
"We all just said 'why couldn't she have been late that day. What if she had stayed in the shower longer' ... just the other day everything was normal ... then she's gone."
- BAY OF PLENTY TIMES, with NZHERALD STAFF, NZPA
