'How did I not hear them calling?' - woman who left kids behind still in shock

File photo / BOP Times

A Porirua woman who drove almost 100km without her children in the car is struggling to cope with the guilt.

The woman and her children were on their way home from a holiday in Hastings when she stopped to use the toilet in Masterton about 10pm on Sunday. She left her 10-year-old boy and 6-year-old girl in the back of the van, thinking they were asleep.

The mother only realised the pair were not asleep in the back of the car once she reached Porirua around 11.30pm and called the police.

Fortunately the children were found by two 13-year-old Masterton girls who took them to Masterton police and were reunited with their mother around 12.30pm.

"I just can't stop beating myself up over it," the woman told the Dominion Post. "How did I not hear the [van's] sliding door open or close, how did I miss my daughter as I came out of the toilet, and how did I not hear them calling out to me as I drove off?"

She said she called the two girls, Shaeane Sutherland and Jasmine Wade-White, who were not meant to be out at the time, to thank them for looking after her children.

"I just babbled on, crying and telling them that they had done a wonderful thing.

"It would have been a simple thing to do and anyone might have done it but it was them that did it, and I'm so thankful."

- NZ Herald staff