FOUR INJURED

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 46, 24 February 1930, Page 4

FOUR INJURED

EARLY MORNING SMASH

MOTOR-CAR STRIKES POST

Four people were injured as a result of a motor-car in which they were travelling towards Wellington running off tho bitumen at Nai Nai, on the Main Hutt road, and striking a telegraph post with terrific force, in the early hours of yesterday morning. The car, a iive-scatcr sedan, was driven by Aubrey Leslie Lister, a. salesman, employed, by tho Canadian Knight and Whippet Motor Company, and he had with him as passengers Miss Joyce Knight,,of 33, Adams terrace, Wellington; Miss M. Tibbs, 452, Evans Bay road, Kilbirnie, and William E. Priestley, 58, Cuba street, Wellington. They all received head and other injuries, and were brought into the Wellington Hospital.

The force of the impact was sufficient to break tho telegraph post off at the ground level, and it was by no means a light post, being.of ironbark and at least nino inches square. It is stated that in his explanation to the police the driver gavo as the supposed cause of the accident a jammed accelerator. The car was very badly damiiged; tho front was smashed, |the frame twisted, and the seats were buckled. Glass was scattered everywhere.

The telegraph post was hold up in the air by tho wires, but tho servico was dislocated for a time.' Early in the morning gangs oi' men from the Post and Telegraph Department and the Hutt Valley Power Board set to work to make temporary repairs. The scene, with the post suspended in. the air and the badly damaged car in tho roadway,, attracted the attention of many motorists yesterday '■morning. The first oar to come along tho road after the accident contained tw odoctors, fir.'B. Bakewcll, of Pctone, and Dr. B. Hooper, of the Wellington Hospital staff, who did what they could to alleviate the sufferings of the injured. They wore taken into a house, and tho City Ambulanco was summoned.

Priestley was able to leave the hospital just before midday to-day. Lister and the two girls were reported by the Hospital authorities to be progressing satisfactorily.