Haunted by teen’s death
Coroner: Drink-driver not at fault
A drink-driver who hit and killed a teenager lying drunk on a dark country road has been cleared of blame.
The Coroner has ruled Annalese Taylor was not to blame for Danny Hendriks’ death.
Hendriks' family are ‘‘mortified’’ by Coroner Gordon Matenga's ruling, while Taylor says the incident haunts her every day.
It was a Saturday night in 2014 when the fates of Taylor, 35, and Hendriks, 18, intersected in a tragic way.
Both had a good night out drinking. Taylor enjoyed a few wines at a barbecue with her sister and brother-in-law. She then went to Rakaia's Railway Tavern, in Canterbury, with two friends for another wine.
Afterwards she got behind the wheel of her little Toyota Vitz to drive home not far away.
Hendriks spent his Saturday drinking with mates on a bus trip as part of a friend’s stag ‘do. They drank at several pubs and stopped at Fairton for a toilet stop, but the apprentice mechanic, known as a prankster, never got back on the bus.
A photograph from the night, April 5, 2014, shows Hendriks at the Mayfield Tavern wearing a blue and white checkered shirt, smoking and with a smile on his face.
About 11pm both Taylor and Hendriks were on Acton Rd. The sealed road, which has no street lights, runs through farmland along the south bank of the Rakaia River towards the Rakaia golf course and then the coast.
Hendriks earlier sent a text message to his girlfriend asking her to call him. He messaged her again shortly after, saying, ‘‘Help, I’m stuck’’. Hendriks’ girlfriend messaged him less than 30 minutes later saying ‘‘are you there’’. He never replied.
Hendriks had hitch-hiked from Fairton to Rakaia. He was walking along Acton Rd towards his girlfriend’s house. What happened is unclear, but, near a large hedge screening a farm, Hendriks ended up lying on the left side of the road.
Taylor noticed she was slightly over the speed limit and slowed down.
She put her lights on high beam and her passenger said, ‘‘what’s that?’’, as they approached.
‘‘We were right there on it and I thought it was a bag or an animal,’’ Taylor would later tell police.
‘‘There was no movement, no reflection of a face or anything. I thought it was just something small so I thought it was safer to go over it rather than swerve, which could have been dangerous for us.’’
The car bounced as it hit Hendriks. Its airbags went off and smoke came from under the bonnet as Taylor’s Fitz came to a halt.
She and one of her passengers, using a phone for a torch, went back to see what they hit. Hendriks was not moving and made no sound.
It is a memory Taylor says haunts her every day.
Her blood-alcohol level was 96 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. The legal limit at the time (2014) was 80mg per 100ml. She later pleaded guilty to an excess blood alcohol charge and was sentenced in the Ashburton District Court in November 2014.
Testing showed Hendriks had a blood alcohol level of 183mg per 100ml of blood.
In a statement, Taylor said she had many sleepless nights thinking about what she could, or should, have done.
She visited the accident site many times, put flowers there and shed many tears. On the visits, she talked to the young man she hit, the statement said. She suffered from depression and anxiety issues because of the accident, but tried to lead a normal life and had a good job and supportive family and friends.
‘‘She unreservedly apologises to the family for her part in the accident which took away a loved son, brother, grandson and friend,’’ the statement, provided by her lawyer, Allister Davis, said.
Speaking to media for the first time, Hendriks’ aunt, Justine Dann, and grandmother, Gail King, remember a charming prankster who ‘‘made life fun’’.
He would fill up a cup with confetti and pretend it was coffee before throwing the contents in another’s direction.
Dann’s last vivid memory of her nephew was the Christmas before he died.
‘‘He was wearing my mum’s overcoat being a real dick, dancing around pretending to be nana Gail – teasing the kids, playing football on the grass and just made it fun.’’
Hendriks lived with his grandparents since age 10 and called them ‘‘mum’’ and ‘‘dad’’.
Dann got the news from her mother about Hendriks’ death.
‘‘At first it was disbelief, ‘no, you’re wrong. This can’t be right, how do you know it’s real?’ I don’t think it sets in for quite a while.
‘‘Then it hits you that he’s gone, you’re never going to see him again. It’s just that immense feeling of loss, you start to run through your mind all the things you should have said – what you’re not going to see in the future.’’
Coroner Matenga, in a ruling released to The Press, said Hendriks was to a large extent the author of his own misfortune.
‘‘That he was (lying on the road), in my view, is the predominant and active cause of the crash, not Ms Taylor’s driving. I am satisfied on the evidence before me that any other driver would have struck Mr Hendriks.’’
Dann said the family was ‘‘mortified’’ when they heard the Coroner found Hendriks’ death was ‘‘accidental’’.
‘‘Danny’s not blameless, I mean he was on the road, there’s no denying that.
‘‘But we feel like, had that been a sober person driving that car, it could have been a lot different.’’
Davis said the Coroner’s findings were no surprise to his client and were ‘‘entirely appropriate’’.
Her message to other people considering getting into a car after drinking was simple: ‘‘Don’t do it.’’