Kaikohe policeman to the rescue after car remote malfunction traps children

A Northland police officer called on all his skills from his former career as an Air Force aircraft technician to help a woman with children locked in a car. Photo / File

A Northland police officer says he had to call on all his skills from his former career as an Air Force aircraft technician to save two young children trapped inside a car by a faulty remote.

Sergeant Kevin Milne, of Mid North police, said he was on duty last weekend when he was called to assist a woman in Kaikohe who had locked her children in her parked car.

Her remote locked her car but when she tried to unlock it nothing happened.

She was concerned because one of the children was a young baby in a capsule. The other child was 3.

''They had been in the car for about 20 minutes by the time she called police for help. There was talk of smashing the window to get in and she would rather police did that for her than doing it herself,'' Milne said.

''When I arrived she was in a bit of a panic. She had even been across the road to Betta Electrical and put a new battery in the remote but it still didn't work.''

By then the children had been in the car for about 30 minutes and she had no way of getting them out. Fortunately it was not a hot day.

''Now she was in a real panic. I made a quick assessment of the problem,'' Milne said.

''One of my previous jobs before police was as an aircraft technician for the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Having worked on sophisticated and complex aviation systems I was able to quickly come up with a solution,'' he said.

''I put the key, which was attached to the remote, into the driver's door lock and unlocked the vehicle.''

Milne said the woman was ''very embarrassed''. She had panicked when the remote didn't work and become so fixated on it she didn't think about other ways of unlocking the car.

''I can understand how that happens, but I still got a chuckle out of it. In fact we both had a chuckle.'

''I then investigated the problem further and found there was a loose battery terminal on the car battery and no power was getting to the vehicle systems. I gave that a temporary repair for her and she was on her way again,'' Milne said.