RNZ<\/a><\/p>\nPolice are investigating the remains in an area around SH3 between \u014ctorohanga and Te Awamutu.<\/p>\n
Clare Douglas said she and a group of about six people were cutting down privet trees near the state highway when the others called to her that they’d found a body.<\/p>\n
She said she initially didn’t believe it, until she approached and saw for herself.<\/p>\n
“The group was all huddled together, and I went over and said ‘get back to work’, and saw the body lying there…took me a couple of minutes to realise what it was and what we should do, and so yeah, I called the police,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It didn’t feel real to me, and even now it feels surreal. I’ve been in shock all day,” she added.<\/p>\n
Douglas said the skeleton was clothed and had work boots on.<\/p>\n
“At least there’ll be some closure, hopefully, for a family, finding their loved one, hopefully,” she said.<\/p>\n
Douglas’s husband’s family had lived in the area for four generations, and she said her in-laws recall that this area of privet trees was only trimmed down once by the transport agency in the past 30 years.<\/p>\n
She said the trees are now about 30 metres tall, and that prompted her to start doing some weed control in the area.<\/p>\n
Police said they are in the very early stages of the investigation and are unable to share any further information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An \u014ctorohanga farmer was shocked when she and a group of weed controllers stumbled across a human skeleton…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9001,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-316997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-hamilton-waikato","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316997","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=316997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}