A case of abundant sorrows

The imagery in itself is shudder-inducing. Australian tourist Tamara Schmidt lay on a darkened Bluff highway with an oncoming vehicle bearing down on her. Nobody can know whether she was already dead when it struck her. Maybe the high concentration – overdose levels – of the sleeping medication Temazepam and alcohol she’d taken had already proven fatal. But forensic pathology can only raise the question, not emphatically answer it.

No blame has attached to the driver. Investigation has confirmed what so many users of that road know full well. A driver travelling at highway speed on that darkened, undulating stretch, without being careless, could still easily miss a prostrate figure.

It’s just one of the cruelties of this case that, much as the driver deserves sympathy, this won’t erase his memory of the collision or its aftermath.

The raging argument between Schmidt and partner, Richard Konarski, as they were driving in a campervan from Bluff to Invercargill on October 26, 2015, raises questions about how any of us should behave after even the most upsetting of fights. Questions that the law, alone, cannot entirely answer.

By Konarski’s account their meal in Bluff had turned into a recriminatory argument after he’d mentioned a previous relationship. The trip back to the city at 8.30pm had proven violent until, near Omaui, Schmidt had got out and fled into the darkness. He searched for an hour, then travelled back to Invercargill where he spent the night anxiously waiting for her.

By his account he’d thought maybe she’d gone to a farmhouse or been picked up by another motorist. And, yes, it does seem she hadn’t been on the highway the whole time because it was in a paddock nearly 50m from the road that some of her possessions, including the sleeping medication, were found.

Konarski was eventually charged with, and admitted, assaulting her in what the court found was a case of excessive self defence. The judge, by a narrow margin, decided to discharge him without conviction and determined Schmidt had ‘‘played a role’’ in what happened. And now the coroner has found that Konarski was not responsible for her death.

All right. From these miserable circumstances both findings can be accepted. But from Schmidt’s bereft family back in Australia, the reproach has been that he abandoned her.

Violent arguments aren’t as uncommon as any of us would like. Sometimes, in the short term, it’s for the best if someone does storm off. But anyone in Schmidt’s state, on a darkened highway, was always going to be in a perilous position.

There was no legal requirement for Konarski to persist in his search longer than he did or, it would seem, to have contacted the police. But the limits to whatever comfort he can take from such knowledge is something the rest of us can only wonder about.

And we should bear that in mind if one day we find ourselves in an even remotely comparable situation. Because unhappily these really weren’t, as Konarski has described them, ‘‘one in a billion’’ circumstances.

‘‘Unhappily these really weren’t, as Konarski has described them, ‘‘one in a billion’’ circumstances.’’