Abandoned car’s hidden tale
In a dark corner of a Waikato Hospital parking building is a car that shouldn’t be there.
Passing people have wiped images and messages into the green 1996 Honda’s layers of dust and grime – ‘‘clean me’’, ‘‘fleet vehicle’’ and ‘‘hello’’ feature among phallic symbols and swear words.
The Waikato Times first heard about the vehicle when a man called to say it has been gathering cobwebs in the first floor of the hospital’s Pembroke St car park for a couple of years.
The registration of the 1996 CR-V expired in February 2017. The warrant expired more than a year ago. Inside, there’s a green and black car seat with a plastic supermarket bag on top. A wheelchair is folded into the boot.
A black simcard-less iPhone is wedged under the windscreen wipers next to a faded McDonald’s windscreen sticker.
Parking staff were alerted to the car a few days ago, director of property portfolio management Colin Hearnden says when the Waikato Times tuff calls.
It’s been there for about a year, he reckons. Parking costs $7.50 per day in the 218-space building, meaning the Honda would have racked up more than $2737 in parking fees.
Hearnden says the owner – probably elderly – simply forgot their car one day.
‘‘It sounds strange, but if it’s an older person, they might be confused. It’s a genuine case where someone has literally completely forgotten that they’ve parked here, gone into the hospital, had something done, gone home and had no recollection of where they’ve left the car.’’
The car was reported to the police as stolen and the owner had since been paid out by an insurance company.
Now it belongs to the insurance company, which the hospital staff are tracking down so the car can be removed. But the iPhone remains a mystery, Hearnden says. Patients don’t tell hospital staff where they’ve parked, so scenarios like this can slip through the cracks.
‘‘It’s the sort of thing that doesn’t happen very often.’’
Staff will now do a weekly sweep of the car parks, Hearnden says. And the owner won’t have to cough up the outstanding parking fee.
‘‘It’s the sort of thing that doesn’t happen very often.’’ Colin Hearnden