Driver shaken after fatal house crash

BY VICTORIA ROBINSON AND BRIDGET JONES

An 86-year-old driver, whose car ploughed into a house on Auckland's North Shore, killing an elderly man, has been discharged from hospital.

Police said the man was shaken and upset about the incident, but was helping police.

The 88-year-old man who was killed when the car crashed into his bedroom yesterday was a former prison chaplain credited with saving the lives of hundreds criminals.

The Rev Lawrie More was a prison chaplain who worked in some of the most formidable jails, including Mt Eden and Auckland Maximum Security Prison at Paremoremo, from the 1960s to the 1980s.

"He touched hundreds of lives. Hundreds. Even now in Mt Eden Prison and Paremoremo you've only got to mention Lawrie More and people will say: `Oh, I knew that guy'," said author Marie Gray who wrote his biography.

The 88-year-old was in his North Shore bedroom when a Toyota Camry, driven by another elderly man, left East Coast Rd, careered down a steep bank and smashed into the building.

Neighbour Kirsten Frost heard the noise from two streets away. "It sounded like a bomb going off," she said.

Mr More's wife, Adrienne, was in the house. "She rushed to the bedroom and discovered the body of her husband lying on the floor close by the bathroom en suite," a police spokesman said.

A passing off-duty police officer gave CPR but could not revive Mr More.

The driver was taken to hospital with moderate injuries.

Mr More led a colourful life before becoming a chaplain – he was a drifter after leaving Auckland Grammar in 1936, working in offices and as a labourer and describing himself as a man who liked to drink, play cards and bet on the horses.

He became a missionary, and in 1964 said he had found his life's calling as a prison chaplain at Mt Eden. He asked to transfer to Paremoremo, housing the country's worst criminals, when it opened in 1969.

"It's not prison that redeems a man. It's society. If we can't keep a man out of prison, let's do something with him when he comes out," he said in an interview in 1977.

Mrs Gray said Mr More was one of the best prison chaplains in New Zealand.

"He was a man who had a tremendous love for people.

"If a prostitute called him, or a person in need phoned him, he would go to help them even right across town at two in the morning."

Veteran Auckland QC Peter Williams said: "We needed people like him, prison chaplains helped save lives."

Neighbours said Mr More had suffered poor health recently and had rarely left his house.

The couple were living in a downstairs flat, recently converted because he was too frail to get upstairs.

The flat is underneath the home of their daughter and her husband.

- with NZPA

- © Fairfax NZ News