Heavy toll for teenagers
Casey Calder knows all too well the huge and cruel consequences of a silly, splitsecond mistake.
In April, the Upper Hutt 18-year-old decided to jump in the boot of a friend’s sedan. He was soon left paralysed from the chest down after a horrific high-speed crash on Wellington’s motorway.
Today, as college students are getting ready to finish school, Calder is flying to Christchurch for more surgery.
He has already spent 148 days in hospital, has limited hand function, and, barring a miracle or technology breakthrough, he knows he will never walk again.
Quiet sobs could be heard as the driver in that crash, Liam Harrington, was sentenced in Wellington District Court last week.
The courtroom was packed with friends and supporters of his, Calder’s, and another victim who broke his back in the crash at 1am on Anzac Day.
Wellington District Court judge Peter Hobbs described the stories of the victims as ‘‘nothing short of heartwrenching’’.
Harrington was travelling at between 125kmh and 130kmh – with seven people in the car, including two in the boot – when he tried to overtake a car on Wellington’s motorway. He spun out, crushing the back of the car against a barrier.
Calder, speaking from his home in Upper Hutt where the front steps have been replaced by a long metal wheelchair ramp, remembers the night well.
With too many passengers, he and a mate had jumped in the boot.
It was blackness as they sped along the motorway.
‘‘Before I knew it, the car just spun out and hit the wall a few times.’’
Calder was lying there, trapped in the boot, and rescuers were cutting him out. ‘‘I’m lying conscious but can’t move, very confused with what was going on.’’
His grandmother, Astrid Moss, got the call at 1am, and was soon at Calder’s bedside at Wellington Hospital.
‘‘The first thing he said to me is, ‘I’m sorry, Nan, I’m so sorry’.’’
Moss said she knew then that though his body was broken, his mind was OK.
By 7am that morning, they were on a Life Flight plane to Christchurch, and by 3pm he was having back surgery.
Calder said there were many things he could no longer do but his biggest regret was not being able to travel – he would have liked to be going to Europe about now.
But just getting around the house is a chore.
Getting down the couple of steps to the backyard requires help – his grandmother has to reverse the wheelchair to get it down the steep driveway.
Calder has a driver’s licence but still needs the money to buy an adapted hand-controlled car.
The family has set up a Givealittle
page to help fund some improvements.
For Calder the damage is done but he hopes, by speaking about his ordeal, others will think twice about jumping into a car boot: ‘‘Everything can be taken away from you so quickly.’’
He said it was hard watching Harrington, a once-close friend, in court last week. At that appearance, Calder’s victim impact statement was read out.
‘‘Since I got home, it’s nothing but s... in all honesty,’’ it said.
Harrington, 19, was sentenced to six months’ community detention, disqualified from driving for 14 months, and he has to pay $2000 in reparations.
His lawyer, Shane Robinson, said his client accepted responsibility for what happened and was consumed by guilt.
Harrington had been the sober driver on the night of the crash, and had succumbed to peer pressure to drive, agreeing to do so with people in the boot, Robinson said.
Now a tetraplegic, Calder said he was trying to move on with his life and admitted that getting in the car boot was his own silly mistake.