Lexus had crashed into a truck and caught fire<\/a> on SH36. <\/p>\nHe said the driver died and the two young passengers were trapped and seriously hurt.<\/p>\n
\u201cMembers of the public and officers put themselves at significant risk to put the flames out and protect the car\u2019s occupants from the fire. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople ran to the scene with extinguishers, and about 18 were used to put the fire out. <\/p>\n
\u201cTheir actions were courageous and saved lives of the trapped passengers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gillbanks said the truck driver sustained minor injuries and was treated at the scene by ambulance staff.<\/p>\n
Several officers were also treated for minor burns and smoke inhalation.<\/p>\n
Gillbanks said a critical incident investigation had started, and the Independent Police Conduct Authority had been notified. <\/p>\n
The Serious Crash Unit finished a scene examination last night, and the road reopened about midnight.<\/p>\n
Police were also asking for dashcam or CCTV footage of the incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are seeking any CCTV or dashcam video of a silver Lexus sedan, carrying the registration DZS7, on State Highway 1 and State Highway 5, between 4pm and 5.30pm,\u201d Gillbanks said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have video of this vehicle, please let us know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anyone with information is asked to make a report online at\u00a0105.police.govt.nz, clicking \u201cUpdate report\u201d, or by calling 105, use the reference number 260113\/9655.<\/p>\n
Alternatively, information could be provided anonymously through Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe manner of driving has been erratic and posed a significant risk to other road users. \u201cThe vehicle\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,95,9525,3549,15979,6179,7126,19552,11784,2079,10933,296,3180,111,43,139,69,29459,1327,23419,137633,8229,23857,3608,4741],"class_list":["post-231678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-and","tag-caught","tag-crash","tag-crashed","tag-died","tag-dies","tag-driver","tag-fatal","tag-fire","tag-injured","tag-into","tag-near","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-passengers","tag-rotorua","tag-seriously","tag-sh36","tag-they","tag-truck","tag-were","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}