Dad’s long wait for answers
Three years after his son was found dead in Gore’s oxidation ponds, Paul Jones has spent thousands of dollars trying to get answers about how the boy got there. Rachael Kelly reports.
Paul Jones bought his son a headstone for his sixth birthday. There was cake, balloons and singing, but as Jones unveiled his son Lachie’s headstone at Gore’s Charlton Park cemetery, in May 2021, there was sadness and frustration.
Jones has continued to spend thousands of dollars and countless hours trying to get answers, and even now he’s no further ahead than he was in 2019 when his son was found dead.
Police have undertaken an investigation into the case, and then reviewed it, but neither report has been made public.
Jones hoped a coronial inquiry might shed some light on the case, but the Coroner’s Office said it could not start its inquiry into the death until a WorkSafe prosecution against the Gore District Council was concluded and the appeal period was over. The council, which owns the oxidation ponds where Lachie’s body was found, was charged under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, and has pleaded not guilty.
The case is expected to be heard in Gore District Court in January 2023.
Police announced in July 2020 that no charges would be laid in relation to Lachie’s death, after its first investigation was completed.
A month later, Jones’ first lawyer, Bill Dawkins, wrote to Police Commissioner Andrew Coster highlighting inconsistencies with the police inquiry.
Dawkins told the commissioner there was a lack of analysis by police as to the timing of key events, there was no detailed scene examination, and police didn’t fully investigate how long it would have taken Lachie to walk to the far end of the ponds, or how he got there.
Dawkins described the police investigation as ‘‘patently deficient’’ and said the only way to remedy such a deficiency was for Lachie’s disappearance and death to be reopened and re-investigated – but on this occasion for it to be assigned to experienced specialist investigators.
In October 2020 police said they would review the case and in November 2021 said the review was concluded and all matters would be referred to the coroner.
Jones and his new lawyer are still waiting to get a copy of the case review, and have been told that even though it’s now finally with the Coroner’s Office, they may not get access to it until 2023.
For 11 months, the Coroner’s Office had told Jones the file was incomplete, but in late September 2022 a spokesperson from the Coroner’s Office confirmed that it had finally received the report.
Trying to get help
Jones has hired four separate lawyers to help him with the case, and a private investigator.
He’s approached MPs, written to Government ministers, tried to get help from Nga¯ i Tahu, and had Lachie’s autopsy peer-reviewed.
Financially, he’s spent all his savings and taken out loans.
All up, he thinks the bill would be close to $100,000, so far.
Police declined to speak about the case or release reports, as they say the matter is now before the coroner.
Police Minister Chris Hipkins and Coster did not respond to questions about why it had taken so long for police to conclude the case review, and why the file still hasn’t been sent to the coroner.
The questions that won’t go away
Jones hoped the case review would answer the questions he’s always had about Lachie’s death.
How did his son walk 1.2km from his home, down a gravel road and across scrubby land with bare feet, without getting a scratch on him? If he’d been missing for only a couple of hours, why was his body stone-cold when he was found? Why was his body found face up when people who drown are usually found face down? If he drowned, why wasn’t there
water in his lungs?
A police report prepared for the inquests officer, which has been supplied to Stuff by Jones, shows police concluded Lachie had wandered from his home in Salford St, climbed over a fence or a gate and walked along the edge of both of Gore District Council’s oxidation ponds, and drowned. It’s a distance of about 1.2km.
All the questions he has have led Jones to believe the circumstances were just ‘‘not right’’ for an accidental drowning, especially because police never secured the scene where Lachie was found, or carried out an official search, and an official minute-by-minute police timeline wasn’t established.
In November 2019, Jones hired Dunedin-based private investigator Jason Bracegirdle, a former police detective with 17 years experience to help him.
‘‘It struck me that the distance he [Lachie] allegedly walked, the lack of injuries or marks to his feet and the fact that when he was found he was lying on his back should have raised flags that perhaps there was more to his case than a tragic
drowning,’’ Bracegirdle wrote in an email to Jones.
‘‘It is not possible to rule out that Lachie died as a result of drowning (in part due to the poor police investigation) however neither can any other explanation be ruled out. In addition, the circumstances of how Lachie got to the ponds is not at all certain,’’ he wrote.
Jones said the investigator did not find any new information because key witnesses declined to be interviewed by him.
The night Lachie went missing
Lachie went missing from the Salford St home about 9pm on January, 29, 2019.
Salford St is bordered to the south by farmland and the town’s oxidation ponds.
It’s a 1.2km walk from Lachie’s house on tarseal and gravel roads, with gates and fences, scrubby grass with thistles and stinging nettles.
Police were called at 9.38pm. Lachie, who was three years and eight months old at the time, was wearing a police hat and reflective vest, shorts and a singlet, bare feet and a full nappy.
Lachie was found by a police dog handler in the southern oxidation pond at 11.15pm.
In a police witness statement that Jones provided to Stuff, the police dog handler noted Lachie’s body had ‘‘some foam around his mouth, was blue and cold to touch.’’ He was face-up, and only his knees were above the water.
The dog had picked up Lachie’s scent about 40 metres from where his body was found.
The handler grabbed Lachie, who was close to the edge of the pond, alerted other officers that he needed assistance, and began CPR.
In another police witness statement provided to Stuff ,an ambulance officer who tried to resuscitate Lachie says he was unable to get a temperature reading. The thermometer, which he placed in the boy’s ear, would only give a reading of ‘low’, ‘‘suggesting that he’d been in the water for some time’’, the report says.
‘‘It was a hot night and if he’d only been missing for a few hours he shouldn’t be that cold. But even my dad, who hugged Lachie later in the back of a police car at the ambulance station, said he was freezing cold to touch. That doesn’t stack up to me,’’ Jones said.
The Gore District Council has no water temperature readings from the ponds, as it installed a gauge only in March 2021.
An initial file prepared for the coroner on the night Lachie died says the reason a doctor was not spoken to was because it was a ‘‘suspected drowning – middle of night’’. A box saying ‘no suspicious circumstances’ had been ticked on the form.
The Coronial Autopsy Report prepared by pathologist Dr Roland Lass for the coroner says that in his opinion, death was due to drowning, but there is no explanation as to why.
The post-mortem examination was conducted on January 30, 2019. It makes no mention of water being found in the lungs, only food was found in the stomach, and the respiratory and cardiovascular systems were normal. It notes Lachie was a well-developed, wellnourished child, and there were no significant traumatic injuries on his body.
Stuff contacted Palmerston North pathologist Dr Cynric Temple-Camp, a specialist in forensic pathology, who said speaking generally, drowning cases were always difficult.
‘‘The classic signs of drowning are water in the lungs, usually mixed with some blood, and blownup lungs. Water can be found in the sinuses just from breathing water in and out, but it’s quite variable,’’ he said.
‘‘The pathologist’s job is to make sure there are no suspicious circumstances.
‘‘You do a toxicology report to make sure the person has not been drugged, and if everything comes out negative and the story you have from the police and the family makes sense, then it can be circumstantial.’’
No marks on the body
One of Jones’ big doubts is how Lachie, who he says was clingy and never wandered off, walked 1.2km to the ponds in bare feet, and had no marks on him.
In a police witness statement provided to Stuff by Jones, a Gore police officer noted Lachie had ‘‘walked quite a distance from home in the time he was noticed missing.’’
The funeral directors who took care of Lachie, in a signed letter that was given to police, say Jones visited them in the days after Lachie died and asked if there were any markings on his feet and legs.
The directors double-checked and said there were no visible marks, and he was in ‘‘perfect condition’’.
Promise to Lachie
Jones visits Lachie in the Charlton Park cemetery every day.
‘‘Even if I’m not working in Gore, I come up and see him. I can feel him there, and I sit and talk to him,’’ he said.
‘‘One day I’d like to be able to sit there and tell him that we know what happened to him, because I promised him I’d find out. I know he didn’t walk down there on his own, he was too clingy, and he didn’t even know the ponds were there.
‘‘I’d like to be able to tell him that everyone knows he wasn’t a naughty boy and he didn’t run away, because I really don’t think he did.’’