KEY POINTS:
A teen who died while working at the Whitford Landfill during his school holidays may have been texting on his cellphone just before the tractor he was driving crashed down a bank.
Police say they will never know what caused the tractor to roll, but a cellphone with
a half-written text message was found lying on the ground near 15-year-old Inia Motu Rauwhero Roberts' body.
It comes just a week after a Levin coroner ruled that Andrew Kenneth Hicks was distracted by cellphone text messages when he crashed into a power pole in May and died.
That prompted Transport Safety Minister Harry Duynhoven to say it was time to ban hand-held cellphones in cars. A report on driver distractions, which include cellphones, was almost complete, he said.
During a coroner's inquest at Papakura yesterday the court heard how Inia - known by his nickname Ninja - started working at the landfill in December.
His father, Stephen Roberts, had arranged the temporary labouring job for the Christmas holidays.
On the day he died Ninja was reporting to his father, who told to him clean up around the site after he finished lunch.
At about 2.25pm Ninja got on to a tractor and headed along a road within the landfill. The tractor went off a track, down a bank and into a culvert, where it rolled and trapped the teen beneath. A colleague found Ninja about 10 minutes later but attempts to resuscitate him failed and he died at the scene.
In court yesterday, Counties Manukau Police iwi liaison officer Maryanne Rapata said she was called to the landfill to comfort the bereaved family after the accident.
When Ninja's name came across the radio she realised the victim was her nephew.
"I still had to carry on [with my job] because there was no one else to do it."
Ms Rapata said trying to do her job while grieving made her realise how well her brother - Ninja's father - handled the situation.
"He organised the team to get his son out from underneath the tractor. Most people would panic."
Lawyers for the landfill attended the hearing and passed on condolences to the family.
The landfill is not facing any charges following an OSH investigation.
In her provisional finding Coroner Sarn Herdson said the cellphone could not be discounted as a cause of the crash but "we don't know what in fact happened" and she was not prepared to try to "fill in the gaps".
