Police should have abandoned fatal chase - IPCA

The officers involved in the fatal chase were found to have breached parts of police pursuit policy. Photo / Martin Sykes

The Independent Police Complaints Authority (IPCA) says police should have abandoned earlier a high-speed chase in Christchurch two years ago that ended in the death of a teenage girl.

However, while they did breach parts of police pursuit policy, the two officers involved were right to start the chase, did not break the law and were not guilty of misconduct or neglect of duty, the investigation into the death has found.

Front seat passenger Paige Timothy, 16, died from her injuries after the stolen station wagon she was in crashed at the intersection of Styx Mill and Gardiners Roads, a rural area in the suburb of Harewood in March, 2008.

The car had earlier reached estimated speeds of up to 170km/h, before hitting a tree and ending up in the Styx River.

Neither Paige nor another passenger, who suffered head injuries and broken bones, was wearing a seatbelt.

The driver Michael Norton, also 16, was uninjured and ran from the scene, only to be captured by a police dog team shortly afterwards.

The serious crash unit reported that the most likely cause of the crash was a combination of inexperience, speed and intoxication. Norton, who did not have a driver's licence, was almost five times over the alcohol limit for his age and had also smoked cannabis beforehand.

He was sentenced to five years' jail after pleading guilty to manslaughter, among other charges.

Earlier, two police officers, who were not named, had been investigating a burglary which the group had committed, when they spotted the stolen car driving erratically and followed it with warning lights and siren on.

Norton later said he deliberately turned his lights off, overtook cars on the wrong side of the road and drove as fast as the car could go "because that's what you do to get away from police".

The chase lasted 1 minute and 36 seconds over a distance of just over 3km before the crash.

IPCA chairwoman Justice Lowell Goddard, in a report released today, found the officers were justified in starting the pursuit but should have abandoned it earlier and should not have reached speeds of 150km/h in an 80km/h zone during the chase.

Neither the officers nor southern communications complied fully with providing information during the pursuit and the communications shift commander did not have time to take control of the pursuit.

The parents of the injured passenger asked why the pursuit was not abandoned earlier and questioned whether a police dog unit had taken part, because it was on the scene so quickly.

Justice Goddard found the dog unit was not involved in the car chase and just happened to be in the area investigating the earlier burglary.

Police staff had since been refreshed on pursuit policy and police had since set up a prompts system at southern communications so dispatchers could get information quicker in such situations.

The officer who was driving had since attended a police driving session and the other officer had since left the police for unrelated reasons.

In her recommendations, Justice Goddard repeated earlier calls that police develop policy and procedures for compulsory drug and alcohol testing for officers involved in critical incidents.

- NZPA