His mother told police she had travelled from out of town to support her son at court.<\/p>\n
After the hearing, the trio stopped at pubs in Kaiapoi and Amberley, where they \u201chad three crate bottles each\u201d and \u201ca few more drinks\u201d before parting ways around 5.30pm.<\/p>\n
Around 9.15pm, 69-year-old Methven man Anthony Thomas Wood was driving south on State Highway 1, near Domett, with his wife beside him, when a northbound Mazda GSX, driven by Hurinui, veered across the centre line and slammed into their Subaru Outback.<\/p>\n
Hurinui was killed instantly, while Wood died of blunt-force head and torso injuries shortly after arriving at Christchurch Hospital.<\/p>\n
His wife suffered serious injuries but survived.<\/p>\n
Both vehicles were destroyed in the collision.<\/p>\n
Coroner Burdes found that Hurinui was more than four times over the legal alcohol limit when he crossed into the Woods\u2019 lane.<\/p>\n
Toxicology tests found 221 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, compared with the legal limit of 50mg.<\/p>\n
Around 9.15pm, as he approached a gentle left-hand bend near Domett, Hurinui\u2019s Mazda crossed into the southbound lane, directly into the path of the Woods\u2019 car.<\/p>\n
Police crash investigator Sergeant Nigel Price found impact marks confirming the crash occurred entirely in the Woods\u2019 lane.<\/p>\n
Neither vehicle braked before the impact.<\/p>\n
Price said it was \u201chighly likely\u201d Hurinui\u2019s intoxication slowed his reaction time, causing him to drift wide through the curve.<\/p>\n
He also found Hurinui had not been wearing his seatbelt at the time of the crash.<\/p>\n
The crash occurred in a temporary 50km\/h roadworks zone, but both cars were likely travelling at open-road speeds, with Hurinui\u2019s car moving faster than the Subaru.<\/p>\n
Mechanical inspections found no defects in either vehicle.<\/p>\n
Wood was described by his wife as a careful driver who often travelled below the speed limit.<\/p>\n
Hurinui, meanwhile, had been driving illegally on a restricted licence that had been revoked just hours earlier.<\/p>\n
In separate findings into the deaths of both men, Coroner Burdes said Hurinui \u201cshould not have been behind the wheel of a car\u201d and labelled his behaviour \u201cappalling\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithin hours of being convicted and disqualified for drink driving with a very high reading, the Mazda driver was back behind the wheel of his car in breach of the court order and with a blood-alcohol level of more than four times the legal limit,\u201d the coroner wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis actions caused the crash and caused Mr Wood\u2019s death and Mrs Wood\u2019s injuries.\u201d<\/p>\n
The coroner declined to make new recommendations, noting that the dangers of drink-driving were already well publicised, but directed that copies of the findings be released to the media as a warning.<\/p>\n
In his concluding remarks, Coroner Burdes extended condolences to both families, but said Wood \u201chad done nothing wrong and was killed through the appalling actions of another\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI find that the motor vehicle collision was caused by Mr Hurinui\u2019s failure to stay within his lane. I find that Mr Hurinui failed to stay within his lane due to his gross intoxication.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr Hurinui\u2019s decision to drink and drive after being disqualified that same day underscores the catastrophic risk posed by recidivist drink drivers,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis was a wholly preventable tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ben Tomsett is a multimedia journalist based in Dunedin. He joined the Herald in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His mother told police she had travelled from out of town to support her son at court. After…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,6030,95,26977,4057,682,8126,15970,12629,1349,3549,63572,39687,21659,4189,31046,15453,11424,5504,4975,71,42,24308,8241,11551,63574,5511,3375,59919,43,107,40,38,41,39,4770,2201,33242,63573],"class_list":["post-82810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-again","tag-and","tag-banned","tag-behind","tag-being","tag-canterbury","tag-conviction","tag-coroner","tag-court","tag-crash","tag-drinkdriver","tag-drinkdriving","tag-drinking","tag-driving","tag-drunk","tag-elderly","tag-finds","tag-following","tag-free","tag-from","tag-headlines","tag-headon","tag-himself","tag-hours","tag-hurinui","tag-just","tag-killed","tag-motorist","tag-news","tag-then","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-walking","tag-went","tag-wheel","tag-zejayohn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82810","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=82810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}