{"id":616416,"date":"2026-09-30T14:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T14:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/616416\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T14:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T14:14:10","slug":"rania-whare-charged-with-manslaughter-after-boys-drowning-at-westshore-beach-napier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/616416\/","title":{"rendered":"Rania Whare charged with manslaughter after boy\u2019s drowning at Westshore Beach, Napier"},"content":{"rendered":"

Police later made an appeal for people who might have seen an unattended child on the beach.<\/p>\n

The woman charged was identified in court documents as Rania Whare, 64. The court\u2019s registry confirmed name suppression had not been sought.<\/p>\n

Whare was remanded to appear next in the High Court on October 16.<\/p>\n

Police said they conducted an \u201cextensive and careful investigation\u201d which led to charging the woman with manslaughter.<\/p>\n

Detective Sergeant Kate Hyde said the investigation was treated with sensitivity and the decision to lay charges wasn\u2019t taken lightly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a tragic event for our community, and our thoughts are with the young boy\u2019s family at this troubling and difficult time,\u201d Hyde said.<\/p>\n

Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME\u2019s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke\u2019s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.<\/p>\n

Join the NZ Herald\u2019s Open Justice team for Case by Case<\/a>, a video and podcast series examining the disputes and decisions making headlines across New Zealand. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police later made an appeal for people who might have seen an unattended child on the beach. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,1975,7972,1848,32294,13239,2511,14134,6179,9944,25201,15035,3607,111,43,139,69,675,303645,19554,18324,121823,67016,102,1354],"class_list":["post-616416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-at","tag-beach","tag-boys","tag-charge","tag-charged","tag-child","tag-decision","tag-died","tag-drowning","tag-lightly","tag-manslaughter","tag-napier","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-police","tag-rania","tag-taken","tag-wasnt","tag-westshore","tag-whare","tag-with","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616416","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=616416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}