It’s a typical country road, with no street lights and a few houses, but she went off “the darkest section of the road”, with no houses nearby.
She’s unclear how the crash happened, but thinks she misjudged a “masky dip” in the road along a bend, causing the car to “fishtail”.
“I over-corrected and went down the bank, rolling the car at least three times before coming to a stop upside down on its roof.
“Water started to come in, and I was upside down, my feet were the only thing holding me there.”
Panic started to set in as she couldn’t escape the vehicle, and her horn made no noise, so she was “screaming for help like I had never screamed before”.
The current in the water channel was “sending my car in a slow spin upstream”, and she believed there was about 20cm left before it would be “fully submerged”.
“The more I moved, the faster water was coming in ... I tried taking the front passenger headrest off to use the prongs to break a window, but it wouldn’t come out.
“I was trapped.”
Gosney kicked the door, but, as she “didn’t have much time”, she took a deep breath and went underwater to continue kicking the door open.
With every kick, she screamed: “I’m not going to die tonight, not here, not in this car, not this way.”
She came up for air before the car submerged, which is when she remembers hitting something in the water, letting the car roll the right way up.
With all “reserved strength” left, Gosney continued kicking until the door finally gave in with the smallest gap to get through before it rolled upside down again.
But her escape remained troubled as the current dragged her with it, to which she felt like she “swam and swam for ages”, only to see no way out.
Gosney, a professional swim instructor, said her training kicked in, and she “rolled on my back” and landed on the bank some time later.
Shivering “uncontrollably”, she began a troublesome climb up the canal to the main road, where she saw car headlights approaching.
“I kept slipping down, but I had tunnel vision ... I kept my eyes on the car and I finally made it, but that car went around me and kept going, never looking back.”
She felt like “roadkill”, then everything “went black”, and the next thing she woke to was voices, and people touching her.
Those people are now her “heroes”, and what the two individuals did will “never be forgotten”.
One of them held her hand while emergency services arrived, “never wavering in his grip in letting me know I was found and safe”, while another woman gave her a “reassuring voice and touch only a mother possesses”.
Not knowing who her heroes were, she joined the Thames/Coromandel community page to thank them via social media, and, within two hours, she found them.
“I needed them to know their efforts weren’t in vain, and I was okay and extremely lucky they needed to go down that road that night.
“I’m still breathing, still going to feel the sun on my skin ... and I still get to do that because of these individuals who became heroes in their own way.”
She was also thankful to the two police officers on scene, who made the call to take her to Thames Hospital themselves where she arrived after 8pm, was treated for hypothermia, and discharged the following morning.
Police said they were called to the single-vehicle crash on Kaihere Road just after 7pm, where a vehicle had crashed into a body of water.
“The sole occupant was out of the vehicle upon police arrival, and had sustained moderate injuries.”
Fire and Emergency New Zealand attended the scene with two trucks, but no action was required from crews as the occupant got out of the car themselves.
Malisha Kumar is a multimedia journalist based in Hamilton. She joined the Waikato Herald in 2023 after working for Radio 1XX in Whakatāne.
