Car Smashes Into Pole

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 149, 12 July 1937, Page 4

Car Smashes Into Pole

TOTALLY WRECKED Driver Lies Unconscious For Three Hours on Road WAITANGI ACCIDENT To Ua unconscious at Waitangi heside the wreck of his motor-car for more than three hours "before he recovered sufiiciently to mahe his way to the GUve Folice Station was the experience of Patrick Joseph Brewer, of East Clive, freezing worker, whosp car collided with a telegraph pole in the early hours of yesterday morning. He is now an inmate of the Napifr Public Hospital, but it is npt at present considered that his coq« ditton is serious. Mr. Brewer, driving alone, left Napier at about 2.30 o'clqek on Sunday morning to go home. It is thought that when at Waitangi he went to sleep at the wheel for a brief period, and the car crashed, into a telegraph post, throwing him unconscious on to the road beside it, The car lay against the post at an angle across the road in such a position that a passing motorist could not have helped but see that an accident had taken place, but no-one stopped, ii anyone did see the smashed car. The whole of the left-hand side of the "vhicle was crushed, and almost torn off the chassis, the radiator was badly buckled, one mudguard was toru off, the windshield was smashed,- and the engine also was danmged. It is certain that any passenger behind the driver must have be.en killed, and those who saw the car before it was removed expressed wonder that anyone should have escaped alive from the wreck. Constable G. W. Murray, who is in charge of the police station at Clive, was awakened at six o'clock on Sunday morning by a knock at the door, and on opening it found Mr/ Brewer there. He was bleeding profusely from several cuts on the face and head, and the constable immediately took him by car to the Napier Public Hospital. A "report frqm the instittuion this mornpending the results of an X-ray exapjination, was that he was suffering from shoek, cuts and abrasions. His conditiou is regarded as very satisfactory. Mr. Brewer is well-known in Napier and Hastings football circles. At the beginning of the seasqn he turned ont as full-back for Marist until an ankle injury prevented his playing for the rest of the season.