A Fire and Emergency NZ crew back at the crash scene today as the site is blessed by kaumatua Tiwana Aranui. Photo / Paul Taylor
A Fire and Emergency NZ crew back at the crash scene today as the site is blessed by kaumatua Tiwana Aranui. Photo / Paul Taylor
Police have confirmed nine people were packed into a car which clipped a parked vehicle and flipped just 400 metres from the Napier CBD, killing one and injuring seven others.
The confirmation came as police continued trying to piece together details of the tragedy by appealing to the public for information and dashcam images of the vehicle in the short time before the tragedy, which happened on Shakespeare Rd at about 11.50pm on Saturday.
The vehicle in question was described as a dark blue Honda CRV, a vehicle which sales material typically describes as a five-to-seven-seater.
A woman in her 20s was killed, while the seven injured, also in their 20s, were comprised of four females and three males, Hawke's Bay Hospital media staff said.
Two, earlier reported as being in critical condition, had been flown to Wellington and Christchurch hospitals respectively, and one remained in a critical condition in Hawke's Bay Hospital, where two others remained in serious but stable condition.
Two others had been discharged from hospital.
Hawke's Bay Today understands at least two of the injured are closely related to the deceased.
Police evidence marking in Shakespeare Rd, Napier, highlighting the path of a car moments before Saturday night's fatal crash. Photo / Paul Taylor
The crash happened on an uphill stretch of Shakespeare Rd, with parked vehicles on both sides of the road between Browning St on the fringes of the CBD and Coote Rd at the top of the hill.
Residents described the horror scene which materialised before them as they rushed outside after hearing the crash, which happened when the car veered to the left while travelling uphill to the west after rounding the first bend.
Evidence marked by police indicated the front tyres had yawed across the road, where the car then clipped the right rear of a parked vehicle and "must have become airborne", a resident said.
It flipped and came to rest on its driver's side, on the opposite side of the road and facing almost in the direction from which it had come, and in one of the few marked roadside parking spaces without a parked vehicle occupying it at the time.
One resident said that by the time he got outside, it seemed there were already a "couple of hundred" people milling around the scene or running towards it, many in Halloween party dress and some with blood or fake blood on them - making for some confusion as to who had been in the crash and who had not.
"It was havoc," he said. "I've never seen anything like it in my life."
A police officer investigating the scene of Saturday night's fatal crash on Shakespeare Rd, Napier. Photo / Paul Taylor
Residents also said at least one fight or scuffle had developed among people around the scene, as rescuers, including six Hato Hone St John Ambulance crews, worked with the injured and removed the wreckages of both the crashed car and the parked vehicle it had hit.
Serious crash investigators were on the scene almost immediately, and the road remained closed until at least dawn, residents said. Yellow marks painted on the road by investigators highlighted the path of the crashed car.
Some residents have wanted speed-calming steps in the area to curb the speed of vehicles travelling both uphill and downhill, similar to the otherwise widely-condemned six speed humps installed on the northern up-and-downhill side of Shakespeare Rd, between Coote and Battery Roads, in May last year.
The scene was blessed in the late morning by kaumatua Tiwana Aranui, of Pukemokimoki Marae, in the presence of crash investigators and a Fire and Emergency NZ crew.
The fatality took the provisional road toll nationwide to 307, the highest January-October toll in at least five years. There had been at least 10 in Hawke's Bay and Tararua.
