{"id":233371,"date":"2026-01-14T20:58:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T20:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/233371\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T20:58:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T20:58:07","slug":"seven-year-old-driver-crashes-van-on-west-coast-caregiver-questioned-over-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/233371\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven-year-old driver crashes van on West Coast, caregiver questioned over ride"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"XFozzeHJqgxP\" style=\"display:none\">Incredibly, neither the child nor their 9-year-old passenger were badly hurt in the crash. <\/p>\n<p class=\"XFozzeHJqgxP\" style=\"display:none\">Two patients were treated at the scene before being taken to Buller Health Hospital in a \u201cminor condition\u201d, according to St John.<\/p>\n<p class=\"XFozzeHJqgxP\" style=\"display:none\">Fire and Emergency southern shift manager Darryl Ball told the Herald that emergency services were called to a \u201cvan rollover\u201d just before 1.30pm on Tuesday. <\/p>\n<p class=\"XFozzeHJqgxP\" style=\"display:none\">Waimangaroa and Westport fire crews had attended the scene and assisted police and ambulance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"XFozzeHJqgxP\" style=\"display:none\">Greymouth Senior Sergeant Mark Kirkwood told the Star the young pair appeared to have taken a family member\u2019s van from the property where they were staying, north of Westport.<\/p>\n<p class=\"XFozzeHJqgxP\" style=\"display:none\">Kirkwood told the Star that questions were being asked, given the extraordinary circumstances of such a young child being behind the wheel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"XFozzeHJqgxP\" style=\"display:none\">Police were speaking with the children\u2019s caregiver at the time \u2013 a grandparent \u2013 about the incident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Incredibly, neither the child nor their 9-year-old passenger were badly hurt in the crash. Two patients were treated&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5835,74,138333,20050,1558,682,27887,11586,15979,29422,543,19552,15974,305,42,101,138334,43,90,1523,2341,14904,21529,138332,40,38,41,39,15981,11427,3807,5977],"class_list":["post-233371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-7yearold","tag-after","tag-astounded","tag-avoiding","tag-been","tag-being","tag-caregiver","tag-coast","tag-crashed","tag-crashes","tag-driven","tag-driver","tag-emergency","tag-have","tag-headlines","tag-left","tag-narrowly","tag-news","tag-on","tag-over","tag-personnel","tag-questioned","tag-ride","tag-sevenyearold","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-tree","tag-van","tag-west","tag-which"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233371","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=233371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}