LEVEL CROSSING ACCIDENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3831, 14 August 1928, Page 2

LEVEL CROSSING ACCIDENTS.

W.OMAN AND BABY KILLED. Auckland, August 12. A level crossing fatality occurred at Matamata at midday yesterday, a special picnic train southward bound from Auckland to Arapuni crashing into a motor-car and killing a Maori woman and her child and seriously injuring two others. Mrs. Deason Kati, aged 20, of Waharoa, and her baby boy, aged 10 months, were killed. Mr. Andrew Randrup,-aged 46, a farmer, of Hinuera, received a severe scalp wound, and Mrs.' Ruru Kati, aged 28, sustained a fracture of the right thigh. The car was thrown forty feet, and when the train was pulled up Mrs. Deason Kati was found dead on tjhe cow-catcher. The others had been thrown clear. The car was smashed to fragments, parts of it being scattered in all directions.

SMASH AT SHANNON. ' MAN AND WOMAN INJURED. As' a result of a level crossing collision at Shannon on Saturday a man named J. Spooner, of Palmerston North, and a Mrs. Baker, of Shannon, who. was travelling as a passenger, sustained severe injuries and were admitted to Palmerston North Hospital about 5 p.m. The collision occurred about 4.15 p.m. at a crossing a few hundred yards on the Palmerston side of Shannon, when the north-bound Auckland express hit the car driven by Spooner and threw it right over the cattle stops to a fence about 20 yards away, completely w lcLing the vehicle, which looked as though it had been hit by a bomb. Mrs. Baker was thrown 20 feet clear of the car, and sustained very severe internal injuries, while Spooner was pinned underneath, and was unconscious when extricated. His right leg sustained a compound fracture. Both the injured persons were brought ori to Palmerston on the train, which was met by the ambulance. How the car came to be on the line when the express was passing is difficult to understand, for there is a very clear view of the crossing.