Police are right to charge Emily’s dad
She was just a little girl, swept away in a raging torrent when her parents went to rescue two hunters trapped by the Poerua River.
The death last year of two-yearold Emily Saunders and the man who tried to save her, Barry Petrie, was an unmitigated tragedy.
For prosecutors, the decision to charge Michael Saunders in relation to the tragic death of Emily and Petrie can only have been painful.
It is nothing to the pain that the Saunders family must be suffering. To lose one’s loved little daughter, to blame yourself for it. It seems likely that no penalty the courts can impose will outweigh how Saunders will be punishing himself.
It is tough to say this, but the decision to prosecute is the right one.
Saunders faces two charges of dangerous driving causing death. Police will allege he was wrong to drive his Isuzu Bighorn into the swollen waters. Hindsight, arguably, confirms that.
He had four passengers on board – his wife Sandra, Emily, Petrie and a possum trapper, when the SUV became stuck in the river near Harihari.
All five got out and tried to get to shore. The trapper carried Emily, but she was swept out of his grip. Petrie, 66, swam after her, but both were swept away.
Our human response – especially as parents – is to say Saunders should not face charges; that he, his wife and their two older daughters have been through enough.
But the purpose of laying charges in a case like this is not to punish; it is to perhaps save the lives of others. It is to make us all stop and think twice, lest we endanger our own loved ones.
And a decision of whether to convict Saunders is not one that we can ask police to make. It is quite properly a decision for the courts – so that is where police have placed it.
In 2011, Ashish Macwan was discharged without conviction on a charge of careless driving causing death. His 3-year-old son Aarush had been killed when the van he was in rolled into a South Island lake after the handbrake was left off. Then in 2015, a Whanganui health professional who pleaded guilty to manslaughter after her child was left in a hot car was also discharged without conviction. The mother, and many others in the court that day, cried as they heard how her 16-month-old son died of heatstroke and dehydration.
Michael and Sandra Saunders’ employer Frank Simpson has said the Harihari tragedy was nobody’s fault. ‘‘The river comes up so quickly.’’ On the evidence thus far, most of us will hope that the court agrees: that this was a sad and unfortunate tragedy, not a crime.
But that is a matter for a judge, not for the court of public opinion.
Please, though, let the judicial process be a swift and gentle as possible. Already, Saunders’ first appearance has been delayed six times.
The family’s pain should not be protracted any further – they are entitled to some certainty and, we can only hope, some closure.