Editorial: Shame on park fence vandals

Catherine Alpin on her way to hospital. Photo/Supplied

As a parent one can spend one's life worrying about one's children and this is especially true when they are little.

Watching my youngest daughter - the daredevil of the family - hurtling down a steep driveway on her little toy motorbike was enough to make my heart leap into my throat.

I suppose parents just have that built-in mechanism - we predict the worst case scenario and then do anything we can to prevent it from happening to our children.

The story we ran on the front page of yesterday's paper shows that parental worry is not always misplaced.

Poor little Catherine Alpin, 3, had to be taken to Hawke's Bay Hospital with serious head and facial injuries, after a steel park fence she touched fell on top of her and crushed her.

The incident happened in Hastings' Cornwall Park and it appears that vandals were responsible for loosening one panel in the fence. Hastings District Council parks and property services manager Colin Hosford said an investigation had found that vandals had attempted to unbolt the panel, but were unable to remove it.

It looked secure, but when it was touched, it fell down. The council is planning to weld the fence.

It is one of those incidents that you hope never happens again and one you are thankful did not have more severe consequences.

As someone posted on Hawke's Bay Today's Facebook page, I hope the vandals who loosened the panel, read the story and feel some sense of shame.

The trouble is that they probably won't.