In December 2024, Jeremy Capper survived a head-on collision near Taihape but suffered the loss of three friends and his own arm and leg. Video / Mike Scott
With every step Jeremy Capper makes he pretends he is kicking a football.
The sole survivor of a crash which killed three of his motorbike riding friends, he is learning to stand “on my own two feet” with his new prosthetic leg.
Jeremy Capper says he felt "emotional" standing on his own two feet. Photo / Supplied.
The 48-year-old lost a leg and an armin the triple fatal crash in the central North Island last December.
Capper is now waiting for a new prosthetic arm, a knee and a foot.
The president of the Sulphur City Motorcycle Club and three of his mates, Lesley Brooks, 46, Luke Shaw and Jacob “Pudding” Coady, both 24, had attended a bike rally in Mangaweka for the Manawatū chapter of the Road Pirates on December 6 last year.
The following day they had just finished breakfast and were heading along SH1 in Utiku near Taihape around 8am when tragedy struck.
Capper was riding with three motorcyclists close behind him when he saw an oncoming black ute.
“It happened so quickly ... I collected the left side of his vehicle, and he collected mine,” Capper said.
Luke Shaw, 24 and Jacob Coady, 24, died in a head-on-collision on December7 2024. The driver of the Ute was allegedly high on methamphetamine. Photo / Supplied
He remembers bouncing off the ute, skidding 100m and then briefly blacking out.
“I remember everything: the noise, the sparks, sliding on gravel and seeing the car on its side,” he said.
“There was debris everywhere. I asked a witness, ‘Am I bleeding? Am I missing anything?’. He said, ‘Your foot.’
“I slid on my belly and crushed my arm, my hand was mangled, and I smashed my elbow. My last words were ‘Please don’t let me bleed out’.”
Critically injured, Capper was flown to Wellington Hospital and then on to Hamilton, where he was in an induced coma for nearly six weeks.
He says he is lucky to be alive but devastated he lost an arm, a leg and his three friends.
Lesley and Michael Brooks with Jeremy Capper. Lesley died in a triple fatality at Utiku near Taihape. Capper lost a leg and an arm. Photo / Supplied
Garth Temokina Thompson, 51, faces charges of being under the influence of methamphetamine and causing a fatal crash killing three people and seriously injuring another.
He was also charged with driving under the influence of a drug “to such an extent as to be incapable” of operating a motor vehicle on December 7.
Garth Temokina Thompson was charged with being under the influence of methamphetamine, killing three people and seriously injuring a fourth. Photo / Supplied.
Sentences for the latter charge range between six months and two years.
“I need to have a bath around 3 o’clock in the afternoon before it gets too cold,” he said.
“We are finalising things on our house before we can apply to ACC for funding, so the house is more access-friendly.”
Thompson is due to reappear in the Whanganui District Court on 8 July.
He said when asked by Crown prosecutor for what sentence he would like to see be imposed on Thompson, he replied: “maybe [he] could live like me for the rest of my life”.
“I am battling with life and I can’t even hug my wife anymore.”
Carolyne Meng-Yee is an Auckland-based investigative journalist who won Best Documentary at the Voyager Media Awards in 2022. She recently runner-up for Best Editorial Campaign and was part of a team that won Best Coverage of a Major News Event: Philip Polkinghorne Murder Trial. She worked for the Herald on Sunday from 2007-2011 and rejoined the Herald in 2016 after working as an award-winning current affairs producer at TVNZ’s 60 Minutes, 20/20 and Sunday.
