Tragic prelude to fatal crash
‘He was drunk, and we tried to stop him’
As she sprinted towards the crash, Phaige Ferguson knew the worst had happened.
Her partner, drunk and frustrated, had only just left their South Waikato home when she heard the fatal smashing of metal from down the highway.
‘‘He was drunk, and we tried to stop him,’’ she said, through tears. They argued, and the 19-year-old was scared he would hurt someone at the house, so reluctantly let him go.
Ferguson’s partner, who Stuff has chosen not to name, died in a crash involving his car, a campervan, and amilk tanker on State Highway 1 at Lichfield at 9.20pm last Wednesday.
‘‘I tried to put it out of my mind,’’ Ferguson said, recounting the bang. She tried to tell herself it was a large truck going over the bumps of the road.
But, deep down in her gut she knew it was him.
She ran 200 metres down the road to the crash, and found police already at the scene. Trucks were already backing up, unable to pass through the blocked road.
Ferguson said she heard the officers saying her partner’s surname, but they were unable to tell her anything.
She went back twice, but wasn’t until 4am when police knocked on her door to confirm the bad news. It was him.
The pair had been together for a year and a half, and lived together.
She said they spent a lot of time together, and loved to play cricket in the paddocks around their home.
They would take turns smashing the ball into the field, and the other would have to sprint for it.
‘‘I just can’t believe it,’’ she said. ‘‘He’s not coming home.’’
The occupants of the campervan were heavily trapped after the crash, Putāruru fire chief Nathan Bennetto said.
‘‘It was a very challenging extraction,’’ he said.
Bennetto said fire crews used cutting gear to slowly pry open the cab and the body of the campervan.
It was severely damaged, and the body of the campervan had come away from its floor, he said.
Half of it was on the road, and some of it was on top of one patient.
‘‘We were able to get them out, alive,’’ he said.
One person was left in a critical condition, and the other with serious injuries.
St John transported one to Waikato Hospital in a helicopter, and the other by ambulance, a spokeswoman said.