Black ice blamed in death of young Canty mother
Black ice is believed to be responsible for the death of a recently engaged mother-of-one in Canterbury – one of three fatal crashes on the region’s roads in only two days.
Charlotte Christina Armstrong, 28, was driving her Toyota Surf when it encountered black ice on McQueens Bridge in Gebbies Valley on Tuesday morning.
Her car slid into the path of an oncoming school bus, and crashed into a ditch. She died at the scene.
Armstrong is survived by her toddler daughter, Mealla, and fiance, Shanon Ayers.
The young couple were engaged in February and moved to Little River less than two weeks before Armstrong died.
She had worked at recruitment firm Manpower for 12 months before taking a job in internal recruitment at the Canterbury District Health Board in mid-June.
Sergeant Paul Piper said black ice was a hazard on a lot of Canterbury’s roads on Tuesday.
An ongoing police investigation would include assessing the effect of a large patch of black ice in the immediate area.
‘‘Charlotte’s family have lost someone very special to them in tragic circumstances,’’ Piper said.
Armstrong was one of four people to be killed on Canterbury’s roads within two days.
Kevin Taylor Jefcoate died when the wheelchair van he was travelling in rolled near Woodend, in North Canterbury, on Monday, while an elderly couple were killed in a collision with a ute west of Christchurch on Tuesday.
Patrick Eugene Joseph Barry, 88, and Betty Dora Barry, 81, died when their car hit a Toyota Hilux towing an empty horse float at the stop-controlled intersection of Sandy Knolls and Halkett roads just after 2.30pm. They died at the scene.
Police said their deaths had been referred to the coroner, and an investigation was still under way.
Father Chris Friel, who is administrator for St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, knew the Barrys ‘‘very well’’ for about 25 years and saw them the day they died.
The staunchly Catholic couple were ‘‘the caretakers of our glorious cathedral’’ on Barbadoes St in Christchurch for many years and it was ‘‘dreadfully horrible’’ to hear they had died, he said.
‘‘It means I have two very big funerals next week.’’
They used to greet people at the entrance of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, cleaned the church, and ‘‘kept it immaculate’’. The guiding job they did alone for many years was later taken on by a team of people.
‘‘I just saw them [on Tuesday] at the cathedral and I said: ‘Pat, why are you wearing shorts?’
‘‘You know what the weather was like that day.’’
Patrick Barry had an Air Force background, Friel said.
‘‘Things were run in a kind of Catholic military style. Everything ran on time, nothing was lost, and if it was it was found.’’
Friel did not know the Barrys’ extended family but recalled they often spoke fondly of their grandchildren. ‘‘They were just a great couple who loved their church and the faith that they lived each day.’’