NEW ZEALANDER KILLED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24403, 14 September 1940, Page 17

NEW ZEALANDER KILLED

ACCIDENT IN ENGLAND COLLISION WITH COACH (From Our Own Correspondent} LONDON, Aug. 15. A verdict of " death by misadventure " was recorded at an inquest held at Reigate Town Hall. Surrey, to inquire into the circumstances surrounding the death of Corporal Bernard McDermott, aged 31, of ihe New Zealand Expeditionary Force. He was injured in a motor cycling accident on July 28. and died in Redhill Hospital. He never regained full consciousness. At the inquest, Mr E. J. House, the driver of an Austin Seven, said that, when he was driving on the road to Brighton, he made to turn off left to a private house. He was turning when a motor cyclist touched his rear-side wing. Getting out of the car, he saw " three or four cyclists in front of him running into one another and all jumbled up." A charabanc was approaching but he did not see it until it had stopped. Another witness said that he saw a small car slow down apparently with the idea of turning left. There was a group of motor cyclists behind it, and one of them pulled in to pass on the near side. There seemed to be some misunderstanding, for the others pulled out into the middle of the road "to meet in a huddle and collapse." Several came offThe deceased, who had been forced out in the road, could not get through between ihe small car and charabanc. He hit the coach just below the driver's cabin. The small car was going slowly, and the motor cyclists were going fast, but not too fast. The coach was definitely on its right side of the road. A New Zealand sergeanl-major said that he saw some of the motor cyclists "jockey into position" to save themselves from the oncoming coach. He noticed McDermott pass the car on the wrong side of the road and then nil the coach. An officer of McDermott's unit, speaking from his experience in New Zealand, where he was a police inspector, complimented the coach driver on having stopped before the impact. It was a splendid piece of driving in the circumstances.