‘They hijacked the road’
A violent street racer punched a motorist in the face as he tried to inch his car past an unruly mob in the middle of the night.
The man, 71, cranked down his window to ask the illegal street racers to move aside as they were completely blocking a main road about 20 minutes from his home. Their response was to vandalise his car and punch him in the head, leaving him momentarily unconscious.
Bruce Jarrett and his wife were returning from a trip to Wellington to pick up a camera lens. He reached the intersection of Meadway and Kakaramea roads near Ngāhinapōuri in Waikato about 11.30pm on Saturday.
The pair planned to be home earlier, but were delayed because they’d run into dozens of sheep on a rural road and stopped to find and help the farmer.
They could see smoke billowing down the road and approached the intersection with caution, expecting to see a crash.
Instead, they found hundreds of racers aged between 18 and 20 who were drinking, fighting, and tearing up the road.
Dozens of cars were parked on right angles completely blocking the road.
‘‘There was no way anyone could get through. They hijacked the road,’’ Jarrett, a former printer, said.
He wound down the window to talk to them, before someone reversed into him, hitting the rear passenger side of his 4-wheel-drive.
‘‘I told them to get out of the way. We want to go home.’’
He was working out a way to manoeuvre through the maze of cars, when he was suddenly punched on the right temple through the car window.
It felt like the car was rolling, he said. He was left semiconscious and slumped over the steering wheel for a few seconds until he came to.
He believes the blow could have killed him. He was recovering from a blood clot in his heart, and a brain bleed that left him severely unwell about a year ago.
His wife, jumped from the passenger seat and draped herself over him as protection, and was screaming for help. She was terrified, crying, and hysterical.
‘‘I was in the 1980 Springbok tours, in the action, in Waikato and Auckland. It had a similar atmosphere to that.’’
It was scary, he said. They were completely jammed in, and surrounded by unpredictable, drunk young people who were not afraid to break the law.
‘‘Anything could happen. It was disorganised chaos. That’s why my wife was so scared, it was volatile.’’
They called 111 for help, wanting police assistance.
‘‘Fortunately there were two young people there who sort of assisted us to get moving forward, but it was just mayhem,’’ Jarrett said.
The cars shuffled slightly to let them through, after about half an hour. They made it down the road before Jarrett rang 111 again, because they still hadn’t seen any police officers.
Not long after he saw one highway patrol car chasing someone, before the boy racers started dispersing.
Jarrett declined an ambulance, but said he was left with a concussion. He still had a headache on Thursday.
‘‘Behaviour like that is unacceptable. You have no idea how bad it is until you are there.
‘‘Someone more fragile could have been really injured. They will hurt someone one day.’’
He said he understood the police had limited resources, but the public needed to be safe.
‘‘I want to see them apprehended, but we would like to see something constructive done to stop this.’’
Police received numerous reports of unauthorised street racing in the area of the intersection from 11.30pm on Saturday, a police spokeswoman said.
‘‘Members of the public gathered registration numbers from numerous vehicles and reported them to police before the vehicles dispersed.’’
She said inquiries into the circumstances were ongoing.