Father meets same fate as son
The father of young road crash victim Konrad Truger has also died in a crash – eight years after his little boy’s death in a car driven by his mother.
Police named Scott Robert Truger, 43, as the man who died when the car he was driving collided with a truck on State Highway 1, north of Waikanae, last Friday.
Truger was the father of Konrad, who was born in a car then also died in a crash, aged just 4, in January 2008, when he was flung from his mother’s vehicle.
Truger’s former partner, Wendy Connon, was convicted of Konrad’s manslaughter in 2009.
A jury found that Connon had caused the crash by speeding, having used cannabis before she drove, and not putting the boy in an approved child safety restraint, when she was driving him to a friend’s house in Lake Ferry from their home in Featherston.
Connon was sentenced to six months’ community detention, 200 hours of community work, and two years’ intensive supervision. She was later jailed for breaching her sentence conditions.
When the original sentence was handed down, Scott Truger called it a ‘‘wet towel’’ of a sentence.
‘‘My son’s death has been accounted for today but in my opinion, it is a wet towel of a sentence and does not send a good message to society,’’ he said.
‘‘I don’t hate her but I hate what she has done and how she has behaved throughout this.’’
In an interview earlier this year, Connon spoke of her self-hatred and drug abuse after the crash, saying she believed the judge, who told her the worst punishment she could receive for Konrad’s death would be to live in her own mind.
‘‘He was so right. I’ve got to live with that pain forever and the fact that I am responsible,’’ Connon said. ‘‘That is so true. I am responsible for my little boy passing away.
‘‘Never being able to watch him grow up, never being able to meet his girlfriends, his kids, my grandkids. It’s all gone.
‘‘It went that day that I decided to go out for a visit.’’
When they were together, Connon and Truger had two boys, including Konrad, and each had children from previous relationships.
Truger died on Saturday when his car collided with a truck near Greenhill Rd, north of Waikanae. The truck driver suffered minor injuries.
Connon said yesterday her sym- pathies were with her former partner’s family, saying his death was another loss for their surviving son.
‘‘It’s his dad. He’s lost his brother in a car accident, and now his dad’s died. I can just imagine what that poor boy is going through.’’