Trapped woman drew strength from children

Police checking the crash site last night. Picture / Lowe Corporation Rescue Helicopter

The woman who lay trapped in her car for four nights just off the Napier-Taupo highway has spoken about her ordeal.

Ada Makiri says only the thought of her children stopped her giving up completely as she lay trapped in the upturned car wreck for all that time.

The 46 year-old mother of nine managed to reach out and hold the hands of her two friends in the car.

"They had no pulse and I knew they were gone", she said.

Speaking to the Herald from the intensive care ward at Hawke's Bay hospital this morning, she said her family gave her the strength to hold on.

"I was feeling like I couldn't go on for too much longer but I was determined I would see my kids again."

Ada was rescued from the wrecked car last night, only being discovered when truck driver Ross Hedley stopped near the accident site to put out a fire.

The 46-year-old woman was a front-seat passenger in a silver 1995 Mitsubishi Chariot which left State Highway 5, just 2km east of the Mohaka Bridge early on Sunday morning.

The male driver and the woman in the back seat died in the crash.

When they met at a clubhouse in Lower Hutt, Ada hadn't seen her friend Moses since 1981. She was happy to get in the car with him and another woman, although she wasn't sure where they were headed.

"He mentioned something about Taupo," Ada says.

The doors were locked and the trio only stopped once, at a petrol station.

"There was no way I could get out."

Worried about her kids back in Wellington, Ada begged a man at the petrol station for help.

"Can you just tell my family: Taupo," she asked, and they drove off.

"I wouldn't say I was scared," she says, "but it was more than fast because I did hear the other lady saying to slow down. Then I fell off to sleep."

Ada isn't sure how long she was unconscious but she awoke to find herself pinned under the car, with only her left hand free. The clock on the dashboard read 5.50am. Moses and the woman weren't moving.

"I called out to them - I asked them if they were all right . . . I felt their pulses." Her eyes glistening, Ada whispers that she felt nothing.

"Then I just said a karakia."

Ada's cellphone had been flat before the accident and there were trees between the car and the road, but she spent her days calling out and her nights signalling with her little torch.

She desperately wanted a Coke but instead used her friend's drink bottle to collect rainwater.

What was she thinking about?

"My children."

She could hear cars above her but none slowed down.

Until, that is, she heard the voice of Ross Hedley - "my knight in shining armour".

The truck driver had stopped to get water from the stream for his truck, and yelled down the bank to her.

"I said, 'Just come and hold my hand and I'll be safe and know that you're there.' And he did."

Mr Hedley found Ada just after 6pm when he stopped to put out a fire on a truck he was leading in his pilot vehicle.

After putting out the fire he turned, looked down a bank and saw the crashed car 15 metres down, upside down in blackberry bushes.

"I didn't know anyone was alive. I heard a noise that sounded like a cattle beast, but I thought I'd check out the car anyway.

"I went down and had a look and there was somebody in there all right," Mr Hedley said.

"I found a hand just poking out of the door and heard a plea for help and I just went to the rescue straight away.

"I asked her who was driving and she said a male driver- but she was the only one alive" Mr Hedley said.

Mr Hedley called 111, before returning to hold Ada's hand and comfort her until help arrived.

Mr Hedley praised Ada's strength.

"I'm just glad she is alive. To go to something like that and find somebody still alive is just incredible. Basically she just fought for survival, she stayed there and did it. She's an incredible woman."

Ada, clutching Ross' phone number, says her heart goes out to him, her friends and their families. And she says although they haven't given her a Coke yet, the hospital staff are "fabulous".

Ada was conscious and able to talk to rescuers, before being flown to Hawke's Bay Hospital for treatment for burns, fractures and hypothermia.

Police have not yet named the victims and are calling for sightings of the car on Saturday night or early Sunday.

- HAWKES' BAY TODAY, HERALD STAFF