Worker cheats death

When a concrete truck came to rest atop Matthew Pearson’s head, he hoped it would explode.

The runaway truck stopped on his head and upper torso.

The crushing pressure was immense and the thought of his bones breaking and organs exploding left him wishing for his head to pop first.

‘‘I didn’t want to be feeling that,’’ he said.

Just seconds before on September 20, the Kumeu concrete worker had been raking concrete on the driveway of a Matakana subdivision, next to a co-worker who was screeding, when they heard shouts to ‘‘Watch out!’’

He looked over his shoulder to see a concrete truck barrelling backwards towards him. Ankle deep in concrete, he had little time to react. There was a clear path to the left, but the screeder had taken it, so he immediately ruled it out.

With the truck just three metres away, he saw his next best option as a pallet stacked with old bricks. It was in the path of the truck, but he thought it might provide some cover. He dived for it as the truck hit. The bricks fell around him as he came to the ground and the rear right tyre of the truck came to rest on the upper part of his body, and the left hand side of his face.

‘‘Everyone thought I was dead. They saw it come straight over me.’’

Still alive, with an 11-tonne truck sitting on top of him and the loose bricks, Pearson began screaming for help and thrashing his lower body to try to get loose.

This dislodged some of the bricks beneath his head and body, creating room for his boss to pull him free.

He was taken to hospital by ambulance and walked out five hours later around 4pm.

‘‘I just don’t know how I walked away. No stitches, fractures – nothing. I just had some facial injuries and my body felt like it had been through a grinder.’’

He was back to work a week later.

The incident is undergoing a number of investigations including WorkSafe and the police serious crash unit.