{"id":236060,"date":"2026-01-16T08:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T08:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/236060\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T08:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T08:32:08","slug":"police-release-name-of-young-man-who-died-in-fiery-rotorua-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/236060\/","title":{"rendered":"Police release name of young man who died in fiery Rotorua crash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  [&amp;_p]:tit-sub-xl tit-sub-xl md:[&amp;_p]:d-tit-sub-xl md:d-tit-sub-xl mb-[1.3rem]\">Police have released the name of a young man who died in a crash after reports of a vehicle being driven dangerously near Rotorua on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">He was 21-year-old Te Peeti Melahkai Raki, of Hamilton.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Police said Raki died at the wheel. Two young passengers who were seriously hurt in the crash remained in hospital.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Police received multiple calls at around 4.30pm on January 13 of a silver Lexus sedan being driving dangerously on State Highway 1 south of Cambridge. It was reportedly seen cutting vehicles off and travelling at more than 80km\/h over the speed limit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">The sedan was a vehicle of interest to police after a robbery in Tauranga on Monday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">After being spiked twice, the car crashed into a truck and caught fire on SH36. Eighteen fire extinguishers were used to douse the flames.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">The truck driver sustained minor injuries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"body-paragraph articleLinkText  lg mb-4\">Police investigating the crash were seeking any CCTV footage or dashcam video of a silver Lexus sedan, with the registration DZS7, on State Highway 1 and State Highway 5, between 4pm and 5:30pm on 13 January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police have released the name of a young man who died in a crash after reports of a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1081,67,42,43,1756,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-236060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-accident","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-tauranga-bay-of-plenty","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236060","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=236060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}