Joel Maxwell.
Helen was killed on that road down there (State Highway One at Manakau). She was 16.
Jeff Fox
We’ve found it much better now that they’ve slowed it [the speed limit] down to 80. We haven’t had a ding outside here for ages – you get the odd one up at the north end, at the shop.
The main bad ones are usually up the bridges here.
Gary Williams (family friend)
She was coming round here, our daughter was home and they were oiling our weatherboards because we don’t have painted ones, we have oiled ones.
Helen had been around two or three days in a row and she was coming around to do another lot when it happened.
Jeff Fox
We just heard the bloody racket, which was the truck sliding up the road with no axle in it, it went off the road just by the deer farm museum, it went off into the paddock, the guy broke his arm but he just missed the power pole.
Gary Williams
It was a huge funeral. It’s one of those really sad things. We couldn’t really work out what happened. The truck driver was really upset. It just seemed Helen veered over the road.
There were two other fatal accidents that day. One on Arapaepae Rd going to Palmerston North, and one near Bulls. The one on Arapaepae Rd, or just north of there, a young guy just drove off the road into a tree. It wasn’t a very good day.
Jeff Fox
A mate of mine here, he was in the Paraparaumu brigade at the time, he jumped in the car ... he kept her head up and that, the breathing side of it.
Philip Comber (retired Levin coroner who heard Helen’s inquest)
Every inquest is someone’s tragedy, but, inquests such as Helen’s are particularly harrowing for a coroner. Sitting on the bench and watching the grief of parents hearing the details of their child or children dying under the wheels of a truck is simply horrible.
Jeff Fox
She didn’t appear to have a mark on her, no blood, no nothing.
Pip Martin
Six months after she died we invited all her friends and anyone, family and friends, to come and plant a tree. We fenced it off and we said this is going to be Helen’s Bush and we labelled the trees, and John made up name tags and put numbers on pegs so we know whose trees are whose.
Philip Comber
It is obvious to those of us who live in the Horowhenua that there has been a marked increase in traffic since the [Ka¯ piti] expressway opened and I am fearful that a further increase will occur once the O¯ taki bypass is in place.
The existing road at Manakau simply cannot cope. Only a four-lane highway with a median barrier can remove the danger.
Pip Martin
When you lose somebody like that you can’t deal with anything, you can’t bear to read a newspaper. And I still can’t read about things that happen to children, bad things. I can’t even read them.
But the one thing you can do is go out in the garden, it’s the one thing you can get motivated to do. Nothing else can motivate you.
We built a cairn in Helen’s Bush, that was a nice thing to do. Some of her ashes are down there.
❚ A single route will be offered up by the Transport Agency to its board for approval to go to the next stage of planning in mid-2018.