'Lucky' crash victim says never again

BY ALASTAIR STEWART

"I'm lucky to be alive, that's for sure,'' says Kapiti teen Ben Clifton after a horror car crash killed one of his friends in Paraparaumu.

Ben remained in Wellington Hospital on Monday, pumped full of morphine, his face scarred with the signs of a car crash that left him battling for his life last week.

He was one of six bored Paraparaumu teenagers whose morning outing quickly turned to tragedy last Wednesday.

The group had hoped to cross the Maungakotukutuku Stream to see how far their four-wheel-drive Hilux could take them.

They never made it. The car, driven by a 16-year-old on a restricted licence, lost control as he allegedly attempted to drift round a corner, rolling and crashing into a pole.

Tiana Law, who was in the front seat with no seatbelt on, was thrown from the car and died instantly. Four others suffered varying injuries including broken bones, cuts and bruises.

Ben was in the boot.

"It flipped, I tumbled round and flew out the back window and blacked out in mid-air."

The brief sound of the rescue helicopter is all Ben can remember as he was flown to Wellington Hospital and rushed to intensive care.

The initial prognosis was bleak. With his skull fractured in 20 places, emergency services labelled his head injuries as severe with possible brain damage and suspected spinal injuries.

His mother, Christine Fiori, was at work when she was told to stop what she was doing and get to the hospital to see her son.

What she saw was so graphic she was still struggling to describe it days later.

"It was just breathtaking. You never ever want to see your child so broken, you just can't comprehend it. There was so much blood, it saturated the whole sheet."

His sister, Carol Tamm-Fiori, was told her brother was dead  a rumour that continued to spread by text message days after the crash.

"When I got the second text I really thought he was dead, I really believed that."

The rumours had spread to family members as far away as Gore and Clifton, adding to the pain.

"Whoever's saying that I'm dead, stop saying it, because you're hurting a lot of people."

After nearly two days in intensive care Ben was moved to a general ward, where he successfully passed memory tests.

But he will still likely need brain rehabilitation as well as possible surgery to replace bone in his face with plastic.

His teeth are loose and grind against each other.

Internal bruising on his hip is a constant source of pain, even with morphine.

"It feels like it's ripping, like there's a soldering iron going through my hip."

Ben had not yet come to terms with the full impact of the crash.

"It hasn't quite hit me yet.

"I never thought it would happen to me and then it did happen.

"I'm definitely not driving with a s...load of people in the car again and I'm not jumping in the boot."

- Kapiti Observer