Best mates among crash dead
Families of French students arrive to take bodies home.
The families of the three French engineering students who died in a fiery crash that claimed four lives last weekend have arrived in New Zealand.
The three students, from the Centre for Industrial Studies (CESI) in Saint-Nazaire, have been named by French media as Soufiane Sadek, 25, and Hugo Defacques, 23, from the city of Amiens, north of Paris, and Islem Boudia Merad, 20, of Orvault near Nantes.
The students Auckland.
Sadek’s Facebook page has been turned into a memorial and shows his last post, a selfie taken at Piha Beach on June 3, as the cover photo.
The three students were travelling with two other French CESI students in a rented Toyota Corolla, which collided with a black BMW on State Highway 2 near Netherton, west of Paeroa, at 7.40pm last Saturday.
The driver of the BMW, Ngatea father-to-be Reece Growden-Olsen, 25, died at the scene.
Two survivors, including the driver of the Toyota and a back seat passenger, were taken to Waikato Hospital with serious injuries.
It’s understood the five students were heading to the Hobbiton movie set in the Waikato when the crash happened in thick fog.
According to French media reports, the five students were weeks into a three-month internship to validate their second year of study and were part of a group of 10 CESI students studying at AUT in Auckland.
The Courrier Picard newspaper in France reported that Sadek and Defacques had been best friends were studying in since childhood and played in the same basketball team together.
Former coach Patrice Grimonprez told the newspaper the young men were similar in character — calm and gentle.
“The club plans to pay tribute to them in the weeks and months to come.”
The paper reported Defacques’ sister as saying her brother was a “beautiful person”.
“I regarded them bears,” she said.
Ouest-France, a French daily newspaper, named Merad as the third student who died and reported CESI’s regional director Stephane Degres as saying the accident was unfortunate.
“Everyone is very shocked by the news. We are thinking of the families.” as big teddy
CESI students in France were being supported by counsellors and a crisis staff team had been activated in New Zealand, the newspaper said.
Degres said up to 70 CESI students were currently studying abroad and it would be up to them if they wanted to continue their internships.
CESI’s director of studies and the director of international relations travelled to New Zealand earlier this week along with family members of the dead students.
One of the survivors was now stable, and the other remained in intensive care, a Waikato District Health Board spokeswoman said.
Waikato District road policing manager Inspector Marcus Lynam said it was too early to determine what caused the crash but police had interviewed the driver, and were waiting to speak to the other patient and some witnesses.
Lynam said charges were possible but police wouldn’t know what those might be until the cause was established.
An AUT spokeswoman said staff and students were “extremely sad about the tragic accident . . . and our thoughts are with the families, friends and colleagues of all involved”.
She said the five students were undertaking postgraduate activity with AUT’s School of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences.
I regarded them as big teddy bears. Defacques’ sister