Grieving mates remember Ricky
The carpark is slowly filling with souped-up Nissan Skylines, 300Zs, Subaru WRXs and every make of performance car in between.
The rain pelts down on Hooton Reserve, on Auckland’s North Shore, but it doesn’t dampen the spirits of those who have showed up to remember Ricky Barker.
Barker, 18, died in a horrific crash with his friend Andre Ahman in a ‘‘freak accident’’, on a dark, fog-smothered highway north of Auckland early last Saturday.
A third friend, Ben Bradshaw, was badly injured. His girlfriend is understood to have come across the accident scene moments after the crash occurred.
On Friday, Barker farewelled at a service at North Shore Memorial Park.
Yesterday, it was time to Barker’s life.
Among those who came were Barker’s parents Kaye and Pete, brother Jonathan, as well as ‘‘adopted’’ brother Bradley Hallford.
Big sister Kelsie, 23, is standing next to fiance Marc Evans, who is doling-out T-shirts from his car boot honouring Ricky.
‘‘There’s a hell of a lot of love at this place, a lot of people coming together to remember a young man we’ve all lost,’’ Kelsie says.
Hundreds showed up for the event, titled One Last Ride, and organised by Hallford, a cherished part of the Barker family.
‘‘I call myself the adopted son,’’ Hallford says, as Jonathan, 19, nods.
Police cars hover waiting to provide an escort for the 100km memorial cruise down to the Auckland suburb of St Heliers, up was the celebrate Car enthusiast groups hunch in the rain, a cheerful yet weary expression on their faces. A lot of the crying was done Friday morning. to the accident Highway, and Reserve.
Car enthusiast groups hunch in the rain, a cheerful yet weary expression on their faces.
A lot of the crying was done on Friday morning.
Hallford says ‘‘no-one’s angry anymore’’ about the June 18 tragedy.
Ricky was a passenger in close friend Andre Ahman’s mid-90s Honda Prelude – a birthday present from his parents – when the young men were involved in the fatal collision close to Barker’s home.
Ahman had been ‘‘doing the right thing’’, driving Ricky home because he had been drinking at a farewell party in central Auckland. site on Dairy Flat back to Hooton
‘‘We’re not Hallford says.
Police told the family neither Ahman nor the driver of the other car were speeding. ‘‘It was just a freak accident.’’ The stretch of Dairy Flat Highway the young men died on can be dangerous for the uninitiated, Jonathan Barker says.
‘‘Bumps can catch you and it was pretty dark and foggy that night.’’
Jonathan had waited up for his ‘‘beautiful, amazing little bro’’ at the family’s Dairy Flat home.
Because he’s nursing a fractured femur with months left to heal, he couldn’t go out and party with Ricky, he says.
‘‘He was just coming home to talk to me like he always did, I got angry at Andre,’’ a text message way home.’’
A silver Holden Commodore station wagon pulls up to Hooton Reserve. It’s Ricky’s parents, Kaye and Pete.
Pete is barely remaining stoic, his face quakes when he tries to answer questions.
Kaye steps in. ‘‘There’s no anger here, it happened, it’s done, two young people gone just like that.’’
The couple think it’s ‘‘awesome’’, they’re ‘‘just blown away’’ that so many people came out in the rain one last time for their beloved son.
Most wear red, Barker’s favourite colour, or have tied crimson bandanas to cars in his honour.
Trailered on the back of Hallford’s blue ute is Barker’s ‘‘baby’’, a Nissan Skyline R32 sedan.
Barker had an entrepreneurial streak, and bought and sold his way to the Skyline by becoming an auto-parts dealer, Hallford says.
‘‘When he bought it, wreck, he built it up.
‘‘It was his baby, his child, he called his car, his ‘girl’,’’ Schroder says.
Mourners have black vivid on the Skyline’s boot. Rest easy, you beautiful We all love you Ricky. from him it on his was scrawled in arctic white soul, a