6 dead on roads over holiday

A Saudi Arabian man in the country on a one-year work visa is dead after he was thrown from a van when it rolled near Waihi yesterday.

The 24-year-old died at the scene of the crash about 5.30pm on State Highway 2, near the intersection of Woodland Rd.

The man's death took the Labour Weekend toll to six.

A 42-year-old Hamilton woman was killed after she tripped and fell while chasing a bus in Porirua yesterday morning.

Porirua police sergeant Ron Walker told the Times this morning he hoped the woman's name would be released this afternoon.

"The bus was pulling out of the bus stop and she was running alongside it."

After tripping she fell underneath the front left wheel of the bus which was packed with passengers.

In the Waihi crash, Waikato road policing manager Leo Tooman said, it appeared the van, believed to be driven by a European man, had travelled too wide on a corner before it had been over-corrected and rolled several times, over a water trough, up a bank and into a paddock.

Police were trying to establish the nationalities of the other members of the group who were all in the country on one-year work visas.

The dead man, who was a back seat passenger, was the seventh person to have died on Waikato roads this year after being in a crash while not wearing a seatbelt, Mr Tooman said. "Once again we find ourselves reflecting on the needless loss of someone thrown from a vehicle while not restrained," he said.

Waihi chief fire officer Moe Stevens said two people were thrown from the van, which was travelling from Tauranga. The van ended up facing the direction it was coming from.

The Saudi man suffered fatal head injuries after hitting a fencepost. The second person suffered serious injuries and was airlifted to Tauranga Hospital.

The remaining passengers had got themselves out of the vehicle by the time firefighters arrived, he said.

Meanwhile, police yesterday named a motorcyclist killed when he crashed into a bridge on State Highway 6 at Coal Creek near Greymouth yesterday.

He was Matthew Edward Carpinter, 31, of Kaiapoi, Canterbury.

Two women, aged 79 and 53, killed in a head-on smash at Five Mile Bay near Taupo on Saturday have still not been named.

Nelson police said the teenager killed on Sunday when a 4WD rolled off the Maungatapu Track in Nelson's Maitai Valley, into a river, was Tod Woodman, 16, of Richmond.