Driver hell bent on hitting me, says rider
Woman tells court that man accused of careless driving was ‘absolutely booting it’
In a flash of metal and white light, TV reporter Karen Rutherford was thrown from her horse and on to the windscreen of the car that hit her, a court has heard. And one of the last things she remembers before the crash was thinking the driver was “hell bent” on hitting her and her daughter.
Peng Wang, 29, a Chinese national, is on trial at the North Shore District Court for careless driving causing injury to the Newshub journalist.
Rutherford and her daughter Ella, 13, were riding on Postman Rd in Dairy Flat, north of Auckland, when a car hit her horse, Curious George, throwing the journalist into the ditch.
The 44-year-old’s leg catapulted into her head, the force of which tore the skin and tissue away from the muscle, almost ripping off her leg.
In the stand, Rutherford said they were riding with high visibility vests and into oncoming traffic last August 20 because it was safest side of the road due to a sharp bend.
She said she could feel the speed of the car and described Wang as “absolutely booting it” as he hugged the white line on the left of the road.
“I just thought to myself, ‘Shit he’s going like a bat out of hell’ but I wasn’t anxious because I had full faith that he would eventually move over when he got a little bit closer to us.”
Ella started yelling at the car to move over and motioned with her arm to slow down. “She was screaming at the top of her lungs. She was panicked,” Rutherford said.
But the pair had nowhere to go with the horses because the ditch was too wide to jump and the car was right on the road edge.
“It was like he was hell bent on driving straight into us,” she said. The car skimmed past Ella, grazing her riding whip.
“Then next thing I just saw this white flash of metal and light and I just went flying and George went flying,” Rutherford told the court.
She hit the windscreen then “rolled and rolled” before landing in the ditch.
Her injuries were so severe the surgeon could put his whole hand in her leg which was broken in multiple places, as well as bones in her feet and toes. “I was very lucky not to lose my leg,” she said through tears.
More than five months on, Rutherford still needs more surgery and ongoing therapy and she suffers the effects of a “mild traumatic brain injury”.
The accident also cost her family about $22,000, she believed.
Wang later told police he was going about 40 or 50km/h and the second horse “jumped on to the car”.
Keiko Fegan, who was driving the opposite way to Wang, said she saw the horses and slowed to about 50 km/h so he could cross into her lane to get around the animals.
But she didn’t see him slow or cross the centre line before he went into the second horse. “The horse was lifted in the air and fell on to the road then the lady fell on to the car.”
Howard Brownlee, who saw the crash from his front deck, also said he didn’t think the driver slowed down before colliding “straight into the horse”. Before the crash, he said Ella’s yell to the car to “move the hell over” rang in his ears.
Brownlee rejected defence lawyer Tiffany Cooper’s suggestion that George turned into the road and lifted its front legs before the crash which was why its front right was injured instead of its left.
He told the court that the car hit the horse “head on”.
“I agree that the car went into the horse and that’s what I saw with my own two eyes.”
The trial continues.