Teen's error in bush fatal coroner told

Elon Oved probably got lost trying to find a T-shirt he had dropped, the man who found the teenager's body in the Lewis Pass area last year told the Westport Coroner's Court yesterday.

Elon, 14, left the Manson Nicholls Memorial hut south of Lake Daniells on December 1 to change out of wet clothing. He was never seen alive again.

Larry Charles of Murchison found the body 10 weeks later near the Alfred River, about 6km from where Elon was last seen.

Mr Charles believed the Christchurch teenager had become disoriented and wandered off before reaching the Alfred River.

"It's been my theory, on what I know and have been told, that the boy had gone out behind the hut to get changed, has forgotten or dropped his T-shirt, and gone back to look for it," Mr Charles said.

"He has come to the Alfred River and has guessed that that river comes from the lake and so has followed the river thinking it will take him back to the lake."

The river, however, runs through a valley south of Lake Daniells.

Mr Charles said Elon may also have mistaken the view at the river for one looking northwest across the lake.

Mr Charles was involved with the initial search and returned to the area several times after the official search ended.

On December 2, he used Elon's T-shirt, found about 300m behind the Lake Daniells hut, to provide a scent for his dog. Later the same day the search team took Mr Charles above the Alfred River where marks had been found.

"It was some skid marks that were down a steep bank. I thought at that time that someone had gone down there."

The dog did not detect a scent and there were no other clear signs in the area, Mr Charles said.

He returned to the river on February 10 because he was convinced it was where Elon's body would be.

"I basically wanted to cover the entire length of the Alfred River. The river was much lower than it had been," he said.

"I was checking all the log jams, some that I hadn't been able to check earlier.

"I was aware that Elon had had about three hours from the time he had been noticed missing to when the rain started, when it got dark."

He found Elon's badly decomposed body lying in a natural hollow at the base of a 2m-high bank above the river.

Detective Mark Lucas of Hokitika, who examined the scene where the body was found, told the court the body was fully clothed in the same clothes Elon had on the day he disappeared.

His body was lying face up, in a position consistent with a fall.

"On the bank directly behind the natural hollow there were two marks that indicated the deceased had either attempted to climb up or down the bank," Mr Lucas said.

- NZPA