Divers accused of coverup

Police investigating the death of a female diver believe three men on board her boat lied to investigators about how she died.

The body of 37-year-old BuaNgoen Thongsi, also known as Goy, a Thai national living in New Zealand, was recovered by the police dive squad on February 10, 2015, two days after she went missing near Motunau Beach, North Canterbury.

Coroner Brigitte Windley reopened the inquest, which started in June, on Wednesday due to concerns about the reliability of the earlier evidence and the inquest continued yesterday.

The skipper of the boat used on the diving trip and two other men were questioned at Wednesday’s inquest. All three have interim name suppression.

Yesterday, another diver on the diving trip was called to give evidence.

David Boldt, counsel assisting the coroner, told the witness an initial assessment by police was that the three men on board the boat at the time Thongsi went underwater were trying to cover up something.

‘‘There were a lot of red flags about this incident and there were concerns that the three of you on that boat at the time were trying to tell a combined story to account for what had happened,’’ Boldt said yesterday.

‘‘To be clear, those reservations were that you guys were not telling the truth about what happened and there was an attempt to cover something up.’’

The diver, also on the boat and whose name is also suppressed, said he was ‘‘not happy’’ with that assessment but accepted elements of his story had changed during the inquest.

At Wednesday’s inquest session, the skipper of the dive boat said Thongsi had problems with her regulator, but after he gave it a few pushes it seemed to fix itself. He had then gone back to the wheel while another diver held onto her as she floated to the back of the boat.

The diver said it was ‘‘quite possible’’ that something happened to Thongsi while she was with the skipper and the other diver and that he had not seen it.

Boldt asked the diver whether Thongsi might have already been dead when the other diver guided her to the back of the boat and released her. ‘‘I thought about this on my own a number of times, there might have been something before she descended.’’

The diver said he could not remember what was said about what happened by the side of the boat when Thongsi went under.

He was not aware anything was wrong until he saw the others on board ‘‘clambering around’’ saying something had happened.

He said once it was clear something was wrong the skipper spun the boat around quite fast to go back to the buoy, knocking him over and he did not see the skipper try and rescue Thongsi. He was hungover at the time.

At Wednesday’s session, the skipper of the boat was grilled over why he spent only 30 seconds searching for Thongsi.

He initially told police he reached the sea bottom and could not see anything so came back up.

However, his evidence at the inquests was he reached three metres from the bottom and went back up because he had no air.

The diver told yesterday’s inquest that the skipper told him the water was ‘‘too murky’’ and he could not see anything.

The skipper told the inquest on Wednesday he did not think there was any point looking for her Thongsi after she had been underwater for more than four minutes.

The earlier inquest heard the Police National Dive Squad found nothing wrong with Thongsi’s equipment, while a professor said there was nothing in her medical history that could explain what happened.

Before closing the inquest yesterday, Coroner Windley said there was ‘‘still so much that is not clear in this case.’’