"Even now I feel guilty about surviving"

It was the worst weekend for road deaths in Wairarapa history. On February 25, 1985, six people died when their cars crashed just south of Pahiatua. The night before two Masterton people died in a crash in the town. Eight young Wairarapa people killed in the space of a few hours. Nathan Crombie talks with Jennifer Mita (nee Davies), then just 15 years old, who was one of only three survivors of the weekend carnage.

Today Jennifer Mita remembers an event she will never recall.

Today is 21 years to the day for the Pahiatua newly-wed of trailing guilt and anguish, victory and celebration since she survived the worst road crash in Wairarapa history that in 1985 claimed the lives of six young people.

Jennifer faded in and out of consciousness for almost a month with serious head injuries suffered in the horror crash that killed Danielle Mador, 15, and her sister Helaine, 8, of Pahiatua, and Darrell Lin Dalhberg, 18, Karen Norman, 15, Mutu Pomare, 17, and Maurice Davies, 16, all of Masterton.

The Masterton group of teenagers had been driving in a Morris 1100 to visit another friend at a boarding school near Palmerston North while "all laughing and happy on that beautiful" Sunday morning, when they collided head-on with the Citroen car driven by Danielle Mador.

Jennifer said the Pahiatua sisters had with them a small family dog that is believed somehow to have caused the tragedy.

Five of the travellers were killed instantly in the collision just south of Pahiatua, and a sixth died before being taken to hospital.

There were two survivors ?V Jennifer, then 15 and her friend Briar Hohua, then 17, who escaped with moderate-to-severe injuries, Jennifer said, including a broken arm. She is unsure of the injuries, as she has not spoken with the woman since the crash.

Jennifer suffered a fractured skull and brain swelling, a fractured pelvis and cracked ribs. She did not regain full consciousness for 22 days after the crash and spent the following two months of outpatient physiotherapy, hydrotherapy and occupational therapy.

Jennifer remembers nothing of the crash or of the month she spent in hospital.

"I don't watch television or read books. I have a very limited concentration span and sometimes I forget things still.

"The crash changed my whole life. It had a massive impact on my social life. I left home a short time after the crash and sort of went off the rails more than is usual for a teenager, you know.

"And even now I feel guilty about surviving. I cross the streets and try to hide whenever I see the parents of anybody killed in the crash. I don't know why. I can't help it."

Jennifer said she feels especially guilty, as shortly before the crash she had been driving the car, but swapped places near Mount Bruce with another friend who was killed in the accident.

Both herself and Briar were back-seat passengers when the collision happened, and each were trapped for almost 40 minutes in the wreckage with their dead and dying friends before being freed.

In the two decades since that faraway Sunday Jennifer has given birth to two children ?V Kaelah, 18, and Tyrone, 14 ?V and is a grandmother to Whakahawea, 20 months.

On January 20 she married Gary Mita, Kaelah's father after shifting to Pahiatua late last year for her husband's work.

"I pass the site of the crash a lot and I won't stop anywhere along that stretch if I'm by myself.

"On Saturday I will have a weekend with my family like I usually do. But I will sit down for a moment and remember what happened. I don't visit the cemetery and I can't recall the event but I will remember them all the same."

The same weekend, brother and sister Michael, 27, and Caroline Sheeran, 17, were killed when the car they were travelling in lost control and hit the Farmers building wall in Chapel Street across from the Times-Age building.

Mervyn Fielding, 24 at the time, was the driver. He survived the crash.