Teen jailed over fatal car crash
“I support Adam as Zara would’ve wanted.”
These were the compassionate words of teenager Zara Mitchell’s mother as she stood in the High Court at Christchurch face to face with Adam Michael Rapson.
The 18-year-old was in the dock yesterday to be sentenced for manslaughter after causing the crash that killed Mitchell, 18.
With cannabis in his system, Rapson hit speeds of up to 178kph in a “piecedtogether” car with a cracked wheel rim and no tread on its tyres as he evaded police in the dark with no headlights on. Police had earlier stopped him and ordered the car off the road.
The car was doing between 143kph and 147kph when Rapson lost control and hit a tree. Mitchell was in the front passenger seat, and died at the scene.
Rapson was sentenced to 3½ years’ imprisonment. “It’s up to you to show that the faith people have in you to turn your life around is warranted,” Justice Rachel Dunningham told him.
Mitchell’s mother and younger sister showed understanding and compassion towards Rapson in their victim impact statements.
Her mother, Anna Mitchell, said her daughter was determined to overcome everything life threw at her, including medical issues she had as a baby.
“You’ll all know her name by now … but you may not have had the privilege of knowing what a light in the world she was.”
When she grew, Zara Mitchell shone that light on her younger sisters, her mother said.
“She was a real mother hen. Everyone she saw was greeted with a hug and a safe place to be in. The one thing everyone knew about her was that she loved with her whole heart.”
At 16, Mitchell left home for what she thought was love, her mother told the court. Instead, she fell for the manipulation of her boyfriend who introduced her to a life of recklessness, she said.
Her boyfriend’s presence was forbidden at her funeral, and he defied those wishes by turning up anyway, Anna Mitchell said. Police had to be at the funeral.
“The precious moments he stole from us we cannot forgive. What we can forgive is a stupid choice made by her friend that changed the course of his life forever. I support Adam as Zara would’ve wanted, and recognise the soul-crushing guilt that he faces.”
Since the crash, Rapson had donated his life savings towards Zara Mitchell’s funeral and written a heartfelt letter to the family, her mother said. He wrote about how he would play Mitchell songs on his guitar, and make her makeshift slings with his hoodies when she hurt herself.
She was trying to help Rapson turn his life around, her mother told the court.
“I believe Adam has hit rock bottom. The choices he made are something he’ll have to live with for the rest of his life. That is punishment itself. He tells us he intends to take this horrific tragedy and learn from it. We believe him.”
Rapson kept his head bowed as he sat in the dock.
Mitchell’s 15-year-old sister, Tayla, said she did not support Rapson’s actions on the night, but respected his actions since.
“I have no words to express the tragedy that fell upon me and us; that day will forever haunt me. But from that night onwards, he has gained respect from us.”
The crash happened after police were called to a report of illegal street racing in Rangiora, just before 4.45am on September 17. Rapson and three passengers, none of whom were wearing seatbelts, were driving around Christchurch and North Canterbury in the early hours. Rapson was on a learner’s licence.
He had consumed cannabis throughout the day, and had between 3 and 4.5mg of THC per litre of blood – a high reading that placed him at risk, the court previously heard.
Police had stopped the car on Carmen Rd in Christchurch at 2.18am. Part of its bonnet was cut out, and it was pieced together with parts from other vehicles. It had a cracked wheel rim. The tyres were mismatched sizes, and had no tread and loose wheel nuts.
The car was ordered off the road. Officers told Rapson to drive at 50kph back to a property in Christchurch. He ignored them and drove north of the city with other cars.
At 3.35am, he tried to jack the rear of the vehicle up to change one of the tyres on the corner of Oxford and Swannanoa roads.
Police arrived after they received reports of cars doing burnouts in the area. Rapson dropped the jack and drove towards Rangiora with police in pursuit, after they learned his car had already been ordered off the road.
Rapson turned his headlights off and drove at between 167kph and 178kph in a 50kph area. Police called off the pursuit.
The car was doing between 143kph and 147km on McIvor Place when Rapson lost control and hit a tree.
Beside the mangled car, three teenage boys tried to perform CPR on Mitchell. One of them was her boyfriend of three years, who was also a passenger in the car.
Rapson had earlier pleaded guilty to Mitchell’s manslaughter. He also admitted two charges of dangerous driving causing injury, failing to stop when signalled by police, driving a vehicle that had been ordered off the road, and driving unaccompanied on a learner's licence.
At sentencing, he apologised publicly to Mitchell’s family through his lawyer Kerry Cook.
“Zara did not deserve to die. Her family did not deserve to suffer the unimaginable pain of her passing”, Cook said.
At the end of her statement, Anna Mitchell reminded Rapson of the responsibility he still had to her daughter when he got out of jail. “Doing something with your life will honour Zara’s.”
The Ministry of Social Development has cut its workforce by 200 through voluntary redundancies, and has signalled that more job cuts are being considered.
The ministry yesterday confirmed that of 404 staffers who applied for voluntary redundancy when it was offered last month, 200 redundancies had been accepted.
Though “frontline” jobs were not part of the redundancy offer, an exemption was made for 13 of the staff taking redundancy, who were considered frontline.
The ministry’s total headcount at the end of March was 9248 staff.
“Even though it is a voluntary process, it’s not an easy one for the staff involved, some of whom have worked for MSD for many years,” said Nadine Kilmister, deputy chief executive for people and capability, in a statement.
“This is an unsettling time for our people, and we thank them for their dedication as we work through it.”
Kilmister said the ministry was looking at “further change” across the following teams: people and capability, organisational assurance and communication, transformation, and strategy and insights.
“The leadership team is working through that now, taking into consideration voluntary redundancies, priority work, attrition rates and other factors,” Kilmister said.
Staff would be told of proposed changes in late May.
Kerry Davies, national secretary for the Public Service Association, a union for public sector workers, said reducing the ministry’s workforce during a cost-of-living crisis and as the population ages was a “reckless move”.
"Further downsizing of this important ministry does not make sense. These are the very people who make the system work effectively for the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who need the support that MSD provides.
"What the Government is forcing MSD and many other ministries to do is to drain the oil out of the engine and somehow still expect the machinery of government to run smoothly. This really is dumb stuff.“
A decision on the future of the Scott Base rebuild is expected to be announced in the coming days, and Timaru business leaders are hopeful the town will remain in the mix.
Timaru won a bid for the Scott Base redevelopment contract in November 2021. The following month, The Timaru Herald revealed that an offer from the district council to invest $1.5 million in the town’s port infrastructure had tipped the scales in its favour.
The project, which was expected to start in late 2022, went on hold in October last year. At the time, Antarctica New Zealand chief executive Sarah Williamson confirmed that the Crown agency had not been able “to reach an agreement on commercial terms” with Leighs Construction, the preferred contractor for the redevelopment. Since then, the project has been under review.
At a Timaru District Council meeting last week, councillor Stu Piddington asked Venture Timaru chief executive Nigel Davenport whether he had received an update from Antarctica NZ on the project.
“It appears they’re moving away from the modules to a regular build, [based on] reporting in the paper,” he said. “So, I presume that won’t be in Timaru.”
Piddington was referring to a news article that quoted a report, released by Antarctica NZ in March, showing the preferred option appeared to be reducing the number of new buildings at the base and repurposing the Hillary Field Centre. The report also said the working group had considered flat-packing components in containers to ship to Antarctica, and using traditional building practices at the site.
Davenport said it was his understanding “prior to the start” of April that there were four options going to the board, and “all of them included Timaru, to some extent”.
“I would suggest that we don’t believe what we read in the paper until it actually comes out from the people concerned,” he said, namely Antarctica NZ and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
“I anticipate, councillor, that that will happen within the next week or so.”
Davenport said he understood that those involved were making a final decision on what the project would look like.
At 7am on May 7, Dr James Anderson will have worked through the night, but will walk out the doors of Wellington Regional Hospital and join a picket line with a sign reading: Every doctor counts.
Anderson, speaking as president of the New Zealand Resident Doctors Association (NZRDA) says striking was never the plan for resident medical officers (RMOs), also known as junior doctors.
“This is a really unfortunate endpoint and not what we wanted to do. But we won’t leave any RMOs behind.”
But with 500 RMOs already missing from the workforce, the strike was about patients, he said.
“If we want a public health system that’s going to keep on delivering operations, we need to sort this out.”
The union issued the strike notice on Monday, for a 25 hour-long strike on May 7, indicating the first strike in five years. Secretary Dr Deborah Powell said Health New Zealand had proposed options that would result in pay cuts or a pay freeze for nearly 600 registrars, including 300 GP trainees in 2025.
Health NZ’s chief people officer Andrew Slater said in initial negotiations, the employer “guaranteed that no RMO will receive a pay cut”.
RMOs were “vital and valued” and Health NZ had “already indicated we are prepared to make a very significant investment in settling the NZRDA collective agreement”.
But Anderson said it appeared the employer was trying to pay for the offer by taking from one resident doctor and giving it to another.
“And those pay cuts are affecting the people we can least afford to lose ... like psychiatry, public health, radiation oncology, and our future GP workforce.”
Anderson said among the clauses Health NZ rejected at bargaining was a request to enable doctors to take their leave, despite a directive from the agency to unions that doctors should be taking leave. “It just feels out of touch,” Anderson said.
Another NZRDA member, Dr Nina Su, said strike action was always to protect patients, because poor staffing was affecting doctors’ ability to make decisions.
“We’re not able to function as well as we would like.”
But it was also to protect the next generation of doctors. “Medical students are already looking at exit strategies when they see how stressed we are,” Su said.
She knew of colleagues who had recently left medicine altogether due to stress, or had quit and come back as a casual doctor where they can choose their own hours and earn more.
“The only way to improve employment is to make being a full time employed doctor more attractive than working in private, working in Australia or leaving medicine altogether,” Su, a paediatric and emergency doctor in Auckland, said.
Health NZ’s Andrew Slater believed bargaining was the most effective way to resolve things and avoid disruption to patients and the wider health system.
Health NZ could not provide information on which doctors will be asked to provide life and limb preserving care during the strike, saying that would be determined as part of the contingency planning.
More discussions are scheduled between Health NZ and the union next week.
The NZRDA has about 2500 members, while the Specialty Trainees of New Zealand (STONZ) union represents about 2100 resident doctors.