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Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 March 1941, Page 6

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TO CABARET PARTY CAP. CRASHES INTO RIVER. THREE PERSONS DROWNED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, March 9. Three persons were drowned when a car in which they were returning from a cabaret crashed into the Avon River in Fendalton about 2.5 a.m. today. By chance, a constable was near at the time and he was able to rescue four passengers who were in the back seat, with the help of an Air Force officer who also happened to be passing. Those drowned were: Gerald Livingstone Hewitt, aged 24, a leading aircraftman, of Harewood, son of Mr. S. J. L. Hewitt, Christchurch. Shirley Stewart Magee, aged 21, widow of Ronald Stanley Magee, and daughter’ of R. S. H. Buchanan, Cashmere Hills.

Isable Martin, aged 20, daughter of Henry Gilbert Martin, Christchurch. Soon after 2 a.m., Constable G. Hart, Lower Riccarton, on special duty nearby, heard the screech of tyres near the corner of Harper Avenue, and Fendalton Road. Without suspecting anything serious, he went to investigate, and after a few moments he noticed a car upside down in the Avon River with its lights burning and facing toward where it had come from. Flight Lieutenant V. G. H. Gee, Wigram, was passing, and he and Constable Hart went into the river to rescue the passengers. The front seat passengers were trapped under water and could not be saved. Four passengers in the back seat, however, had a small reservoir of air near the floor boarcis and were dragged out alive and comparatively unharmed. They were Mrs. Bernadette Pearson, and Leading Aircraftman Neil Geoffrey Packard, Ronald Francis Stone and Noel Roy Meyer. They had been unable to open the doors from the inside but Constable Hart managed tb open them from the outside and the back-seat passengers were dragged down under water out of the door and helped to the bank. Pitch darkness hampered the rescue work. Hewitt was the next to come out, but artificial respiration applied by the constable was of no avail. The police who arrived soon after recovered the body of one of the girls, but the body of the third victim was not found till a breakdown van moved the car. The car was a modern four-door sedan and its roof was considerably damaged, apparently by impact with the surface of the water, From the condition of the front wheels, it appeared that the car hit the kerbing and overturned as it descended the' bank, which is about 10 feet high, into the river. From the condition of the windscreen and the roof it seems probable that the three front passengers were stunned or made unconscious by the impact and therefore were unable to save themselves.