- Doug Domigan was an Air Force veteran who served in Vietnam and died suddenly aged 86.
- His last words focused on his driver’s licence being suspended after a minor accident.
- Questions are now being asked of the police alert to NZTA that cost Domigan his licence.
WARNING: This article discusses suicide and may be upsetting to some readers.
“I just cannot imagine life unable to drive.”
Those were among the last words Doug Domigan wrote. Aged 86, the Vietnam veteran and grandfather arranged on a coffee table his car keys and a letter from the NZ Transport Agency suspending his driver’s licence.
And then, surrounded by photographs of his family in his Whangārei home, he left this world.
When son Grant Domigan recovered one of his dad’s devices the next week, he found recent searches around a particular method of suicide. On another tablet, found by police, was one final, unsent, email.
That final note described receiving the NZTA letter and his licence suspension after a “suspected medical condition at Paihia”. And then those words: “I just cannot imagine life unable to drive.”
Grant Domigan wants answers. He wants Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Police Minister Mark Mitchell to explain how a minor accident led to his father’s death, which the coroner is investigating as a suspected suicide.
He wants to know how two police officers visiting his dad at home in Whangārei provided what appeared to him to amount to a medical assessment for NZTA when Doug’s own GP had cleared him to drive just a few months before.
He wants NZTA to explain why, weeks after the police visit, it delivered such shattering news to his dad without some sort of cushion – such as a telephone call – to soften the blow.
And now there are further questions. The NZ Herald has retraced the dominoes that started to fall when Doug Domigan’s car hit a concrete wall in Paihia.
Those inquiries have identified what appear to be inaccuracies in the account police gave NZTA that led to the suspension.
No one who knew Doug can understand it. He was active, alert and fit. In many ways, you could still see the retired Royal NZ Air Force warrant officer who had served in Malaysia and Vietnam. And driving? He’d worked as a taxi driver for years after leaving the military.
One neighbour, Anthony, told the Herald: “He said only a few weeks ago, ‘every day above ground is a good day’.”
When Doug hit the wall
On August 14 this year, Doug Domigan set off from home in Whangārei for a couple of nights in Paihia.
He had booked into and stayed at Bounty Inn that Wednesday night, a tidy and comfortable set of motel units one block back from the foreshore and close to Paihia’s town centre of bars, cafes and restaurants.
The next morning, having checked out, Doug had breakfast in Paihia and called his son Grant, who suggested travelling on to Kerikeri. Doug’s device had no internet connection so he returned to Bounty Inn, pulling into a car park space and taking advantage of the motel’s Wi-Fi.
What happened next, Grant has pieced together. “He was in the car, in drive with his foot on the brake.” Doug sat there for a while, connected to the motel Wi-Fi to work out his route ahead, then prepared to leave.
It’s not known why the car lurched ahead – it was in gear so perhaps Doug had forgotten that was the case. A neighbour who spoke to Doug about the accident thought the carpet from the footwell had caught the accelerator.
In any case, the car leapt forward and hit a concrete wall on the side of the motel.
A cleaner working at the motel, who had not long before walked between the car and the wall, checked on Doug and found him shaken and upset. In Grant’s view, this wasn’t surprising given the sudden and unexpected impact.
However, the damage to the car was minor and the motel had his details for insurance purposes. Once settled, Doug reversed out of the carpark and left.
Days passed and Doug had his car repaired. He resumed life as normal which, as the Herald has found, involved flying remote-controlled aircraft, working in his garden and walking a neighbour’s dog – a stand-in for his own dog Zac who had died in February.
And there were plans, says Grant. Aside from visits to family in Auckland, there was the prospect of a road trip around the South Island. He’d made the journey a year earlier, flying down to pick up a rental. This time he wanted to take his own car across to Picton on a ferry.
Then came a visit from the police on August 25. The crash at the motel led to a call to police in which concern was voiced about Doug’s fitness to drive.
The follow-up to that visit was a letter from NZTA. It was dated as sent on September 27 but appears to have been delivered on October 4, according to a neighbour who Doug spoke to about the licence suspension.
October 4 was the same date NZTA had nominated as the date of suspension, meaning Doug’s licence was suspended from the point the letter arrived.
From that moment, without a doctor’s medical check, Doug could no longer drive. “This sent Dad into a spiral of depression and he [died] on Sunday, October 6,” says Grant.
The NZTA letter to Doug from the agency’s medical division sets out the police concerns, but the way events have been framed is under question.
It correctly states Doug had stayed the night but incorrectly asserts the accident happened “when checking out”.
It’s a small error but appears in the first sentence that sets out the police case to NZTA. Larger questions hang over what follows.
NZTA also states police told it “[Doug] crashed into the brick wall that is part of the motel room causing damage to the building and to the vehicle”. “It appears that you hit the accelerator instead of the brake when parking, which led you to drive into the brick wall/supporting wall of the motel and it was lucky there were no occupants in the room at the time.”
Police also told NZTA, according to the letter, Doug was approached by a staff member and he “appeared very shaky and could not comprehend what had happened and why”, and he “appeared flustered”.
Also, NZTA says “you left to head back home … before the police arrived and you were able to be assessed medically”.
And, from the police visit to his home, “you stated you have a heart condition” and “you were on blood pressure medication”. There were also police concerns that, when visited, “you appeared very shaky”.
Collectively, the police case depicts an elderly driver with cardiac problems, who was confused and uncertain and had endangered the safety of those staying at the motel and then left the scene of an accident.
“The [police] report raises concerns that you may have a medical condition that could affect your ability to drive safely,” said the NZTA letter.
But what if Doug didn’t have a heart condition? What if he hit a storage cupboard instead of a motel room? What if he was under no obligation to stay and wait to be medically assessed? What if he was shaky because it was unnerving to have police arrive at his home to speak of a minor accident over which he was embarrassed?
Questions over police case
Doug did not crash into a motel room. Rather, it was a storage cupboard. There were no occupants who were, as police told NZTA, “lucky”. There were a few paint cans and an electrical switchboard.
The Herald established this through motel owner Peter Coman, who called police after Doug hit the wall.
Coman told the Herald he did so because he was concerned about Doug being on the road. It wasn’t so long since he’d escorted his own mother to the doctor to have her assessed for driving (she was fine although now has a few restrictions on her licence).
So the sight of the Honda hatchback lurching into the wall, and the sight of the smashed breeze blocks, added to a feeling of unease that had hung about since Doug checked out that morning.
Doug had done so after a single night despite booking for two nights (and getting a discount for doing so). When he fetched up at the motel office, he told Coman he wanted to move on as he hadn’t found a heater for the room or a blanket for the bed.
Coman took him back to the room, showed him the blanket and heater and was frustrated to find Doug determined to move on anyway.
The accident was caught on CCTV. From that perspective, whoever was watching would have seen the elderly guest return an hour or so after checking out and then sit in their car, apparently staring at their lap. It wouldn’t have been possible to see Doug’s tablet with the angle of the cameras.
And then, on CCTV, would have been the sight of the Honda hatchback lurching forward and striking the wall.
The day of the accident, Coman’s feeling of unease that wouldn’t budge. In his mind was his mum’s licence check, but also the staff member who had walked between the wall and Doug’s car not long before the two collided.
“I thought he seemed strange. You know how you get that feeling about people? He just seemed really queer. I thought I’d better ring the police. I felt there was something wrong.”
Out of genuine concern, Coman called police in the hope Doug would be stopped on the highway south and checked on. “I just thought there was something wrong.”
Police didn’t intercept Doug on the road but did visit the motel. The assessment of damage and risk was carried out from the outside and not inside the room they later asserted Doug had hit.
Coman: “When you look from the outside, you’d think it [the car] went into the room. They [police] didn’t go into the room. I imagine in their minds, it was obvious in their head.”
On the police comment Doug had hit a “brick wall/supporting wall”, Coman said: “They were probably looking at it as laymen, not as builders or engineers.”
Coman was saddened to hear of Doug’s death two months later. The damage was repaired, covered by insurance, and the motel got on with the business of offering travellers accommodation in the heart of Paihia.
“We didn’t think a hell of a lot of it at the time. It could have happened to any of us. But older people, maybe it happens more often.”
Other elements of police advice in the NZTA letter also raise questions. The statement he left the accident scene “before the police arrived and you were able to be assessed medically” suggests he had an obligation to stay.
And the police recounting visiting Doug at home and being told of a “heart condition” is in contrast to what others understood of his health, including – it seems – his GP of 14 years.
The GP, who has asked not to be named, carried out the required medical assessment of Doug a few months before the accident. Doug’s licence was renewed in May this year after he passed the obligatory medical assessment required every two years after turning 80.
The same GP filled in the Veteran’s Medical Certificate required by Veterans’ Affairs for the funeral grant application. Among the conditions listed – back pain, insomnia and a few others – is no reference to a heart condition.
“Doug was [an] 86-year-old male. Was living independently in his own home. He was still active. He was well.”
The GP said “recent chest pain” had been examined at Whangārei Hospital and was found to be musculoskeletal pain, as confirmed by an attached specialist’s letter. The doctor would not talk to the Herald but has since confirmed to Grant that Doug did not have a heart condition.
The Herald asked police if it stood by the information gathered and relayed to NZTA. It has not responded to that question. Likewise, NZTA has not responded over whether it will ask police if the information supplied was accurate.
‘Of course he was shaky’
Former police detective Mike Sabin, now a private investigator, reviewed information gathered by the Herald and has formed a view. The Herald provided Sabin with the NZTA letter along with the GP’s notes and a summary of our findings.
“Police are not qualified, nor is it their role, to medically assess people,” he said. “They are entitled to make observations and inquiries, of course, but they are not qualified to go on and make qualitative judgments, opinions and conclusions thereafter. That is the role of a properly qualified medical practitioner.
“On that basis alone NZTA is making a decision based on an unqualified opinion of the driver’s medical condition as the grounds for the suspension.”
In Sabin’s view, it provides a less-than-sound basis for NZTA’s statement it had concerns Doug had a medical condition that made him unsafe on the road. Rather, he said it appears to be an “unqualified opinion combined with conflation of alleged symptoms and inexplicably exaggerated facts”.
Those include the observation Doug was “very shaky” when police visited him at home. “That is unremarkable for a gentleman in his mid-80s, but more so when likely anxious and nervous when speaking to police. Many younger, perfectly healthy people may well be ‘shaky’ in this scenario.
“Context is everything and police appear to have used this normal human reaction to bolster their conclusions.”
In Sabin’s view, the same applies to the cleaner’s account of Doug being “shaky” after the crash while still seated in the car. “Again, this would be a common reaction for any citizen who is clearly shocked and somewhat bewildered at an event of this nature.”
The reference to a “heart condition”, which does not appear in the medical notes, suggested to Sabin that police “conflated” Doug’s reference to chest pain and blood pressure medication.
“Police have clearly misrepresented the seriousness of this crash by stating it was lucky there was no one in the room where the impact happened. That is not supported by the facts – the area of impact was actually a storeroom.”
The reference to a “supporting wall” also caught Sabin’s attention, phrased “as if to provide the inference that the crash could have resulted in a supporting wall giving way”. “All external walls to buildings are supporting walls. That is erroneous and irrelevant in the context of this crash as the damage was very minor in reality.”
Sabin said it appeared police had “catastrophised the entire crash evidence to fit a narrative that supports that this crash was a consequence of the medical condition they assert he has”.
“This case bears all the hallmarks of police forming a conclusion and then reflecting what they assert as factual evidence in a manner that supports and bolsters their theory.”
When Doug’s licence was suspended
Doug Domigan was a proud man and one who was entwined with the lives of those he lived alongside on a quiet suburban street in south Whangārei.
His immediate neighbour, aged 79, had chatted with Doug about his own upcoming compulsory medical assessment for a driver’s licence at 80, the age at which such checks are needed every two years.
He didn’t want to be named but, with the remnant of a Scottish burr, recalled Doug relaying how he’d blitzed his own 86th birthday medical assessment. There was counting backwards in threes and then recalling a series of numbers while being distracted.
And the doctor was tricky, it seems, because Doug was asked again for one of those numbers as he rose to leave. He rattled off the number, apparently to the doctor’s surprise, and then added: “I’ll tell you the rest if you like”, and then did.
“He was a clever man, a proud man,” his Scot neighbour says.
Doug’s retirement was the capping stone to a rich life. He had signed up to serve his country as a teenage aircraft mechanic with the RNZAF, later training as a navigator and then an electronic warfare officer on the then-new P3 Orions. Doug’s service abroad saw him flying in the Malayan Emergency, the 1948-1960 guerilla war in Malaysia, and serving two tours in Vietnam on low-level flights delivering supplies to combat medical outposts.
When Doug left the Air Force, he bought a taxi licence and drove until early retirement. For a flying officer, logistics and route planning would have been second nature. He was a champion bowls player and pretty handy on a pool table, once winning the chance to play against – and be cleaned out by – the Australian great Eddie Charlton.
And he was still active – and sharp. Doug’s daily patterns were a familiar sight to neighbours. Looking out their windows in the morning, they would see Doug collecting the Northern Advocate from his letterbox. “He got the paper delivered in the morning. The reason he did that was for the crosswords. He was a crossword king,” says the Scot.
And then, “he’d jump in his car in the morning and go for a drive and then go for a walk”.
Doug’s wife June, Grant’s mum, died four years ago. If you wonder how you manage after such a loss, the Scot has this to say from experience: “If someone thinks they know the answer, more than likely they don’t.
“When you end up retired and your wife passes away… you’ve been and travelled the world together but now it’s a different world.
“He obviously missed June but it’s what happens. The trick is to keep yourself busy.”
And Doug was busy. Once and sometimes twice a week, he would lift into his car the large radio-controlled aircraft he flew and join other members of the Whangārei Model Aircraft Club at a park in Portland.
Doug was well-liked among the 30 or so members, says club secretary Stuart Bell. And while Bell doesn’t have the expertise to equate driving with flying a model plane with a 1.5m wingspan, he says: “You do need a reasonable amount of skill to keep track of altitude and attitude of your model, especially when there are other models flying around.”
Along with daily routines, Doug had regular catch-ups with family and had a trip planned – the second in two years – to the South Island, back to his roots.
Anthony, over the road, would catch up with Doug a couple of times a week. They kept an eye on each other’s houses and helped each other out with their gardens.
“He used to go out every morning. You’d see Doug go out the driveway and head into town. He was always out and about, always flying his model aircraft.
“I imagine if they cut that off, he would be isolated. It would be really tough for him. It was his independence.”
The Wednesday before Doug died, the pair trimmed back his hedge. “He cut a lot of it himself,” says Anthony, who is a few decades younger. “It was just the bits that were hard to get to I did.”
Anthony had been Doug’s passenger on many occasions. On that day, they took the garden clippings to the tip and stopped for a coffee afterwards. “He was a good driver.”
On Saturday, October 5, Anthony headed across to Doug’s to watch Wellington wallop Hawke’s Bay 46-28 in the final NPC round. Doug was a little more subdued than usual, flicking the television remote, seemingly on edge.
Doug, a proud man, didn’t tell his mate about the licence.
That was news he shared across the fence with the Scot.
“I was working in my back garden. I heard Doug call out over the fence, ‘can you help me?’”
Once they sat down, Doug told the Scot about the letter and his suspended licence.
“He had to go to the doctor to get a clearance. He was really stressed about it. I said, ‘what’s the matter Dougie?’. He’d had a wee accident. He didn’t want to talk about it. I think this is where the embarrassment came in.
“Sometimes it happens, your foot gets caught in the carpet. Doug told me and he’s then going on about his licence, that his licence has been cancelled.”
The Scot told him, no problem, he could drive Doug to the doctors and he could do the test again and life would go on.
“And he said, ‘I’ve got to go shopping and I’ve got to go for a drive’. It keeps him sane and focused. And if he wants to go back to the South Island, he can’t do that.”
Doug’s death will be examined in the coronial process. It will investigate whether the dominoes began to fall for Doug when he hit the wall in Paihia or whether, perhaps, they began to fall earlier.
There was the loss of his dog Zac around February, although he had been walking another neighbour’s dog and was talking about getting a new one. Or was it the loss of June four years ago? Perhaps it was another suspected suicide on the street, just a few months ago, that planted a dark seed.
Or was it the letter that shrank his world? Was that the tipping point?
They didn’t need to treat him like this
Minister of Transport Simeon Brown said he had asked NZTA to look closely into its communication with Doug before his death “and whether more support and care could have been provided”.
He said he had “made my expectations clear that they engage with people, and particularly vulnerable members of our community, with respect and humility”.
“I was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Mr Domigan and the circumstances in which he passed away. I would like to convey my condolences to his family and loved ones for their loss.”
Brown said a licence allowed access to “social and economic opportunities”. “For many, it is their connection to family, friends, and essential services.” He said, though, there were other options for those over 65 including Total Mobility and SuperGold Card concessions on public transport.
NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) regulatory group manager Brent Alderton said the agency had been in contact with Doug’s family since his death and “acknowledged the concerns which they have expressed”.
Alderton said information from police raised “sufficient concern” to suspend Doug’s licence. “Police determine if they believe that a medical condition could be a contributing factor in any incident or accident, and then provide that information to NZTA. The police assessment is of the situation that has occurred, not of the driver’s age.”
Licence suspension was considered a “temporary measure” to deal with safety risks ahead of a detailed assessment by a doctor, he said.
Alderton said there were 322 licence suspensions on medical grounds in the past financial year.
Alderton said efforts had been made to keep Grant “informed of progress on the work that we already had under way to better support those affected by the suspension or the removal of a driver’s licence on medical grounds”.
“This work includes a review of the letters which we send to older drivers, and increasing awareness of the process and the options older drivers have when renewing their licence.
“Specific questions about the police assessment and report in this case should be addressed to police.”
Police Minister Mark Mitchell also passed on condolences but wouldn’t comment further, saying it was an “operational matter for police and NZTA”. He said those with concerns about police actions could make a complaint to the Independent Police Conduct Agency.
Northland Road Policing Manager Inspector Anne-Marie Fitchett confirmed police were called to a “minor vehicle collision” at the motel on August 15.
She said police visited Doug on August 25. “He could not recall how the incident happened, but disclosed he had a heart condition and other information about some medication he was taking.”
And then, in September, the officer handling the police file relating to the accident “requested NZTA consider a medical review so as to be sure there were no further concerns”.
Fitchett said it was up to NZTA to decide if further action was needed, including a medical assessment.
“Police do not determine whether a driver is medically fit to continue driving or make medical judgments.”
This remains a point of conflict – perhaps another matter for the coroner to rule on when Doug’s death is examined in court.
Grant is of the view that the police reporting of his father’s physical state, and the misreporting he believes happened around the “heart condition”, do amount to a “medical assessment”. It was a concern echoed by Sabin.
It could be years before a coroner investigates and rules on the circumstances of Doug’s death, but Grant wants this handled now before someone else is swept away.
Grant says: “There’s a problem here and the problem starts with the police. What business is it of police to make a recommendation [on medical grounds]? He’d only been cleared for his licence two months earlier by his GP.
“What the hell are the police doing making a medical assessment when the GP said he was okay?”
The NZTA letter, too, is an issue. “Maybe they should be hand-delivering letters to the elderly. It’s an absolute lack of care with no forward thinking.
“I just want it fixed. I know in life anything that happens once can happen again.
“The outcome I’d like is that police can’t make medical determinations. And Waka Kotahi needs a better process.”
Doug had mentioned the accident to his son Grant, who understood it to be – as police phrased it – a minor accident. But he hadn’t mentioned the police visit or the licence suspension.
There was no foreshadowing of what was to come. Grant had tried calling his dad that Sunday, October 6, and the phone went straight to the answering service. “I couldn’t get hold of him so I rang his neighbour. He said the police came and took his licence. That wasn’t quite right.
“I said, ‘I can’t get a hold of him. Can you go and check on him?’ No answer, no answer the next day.”
That was Monday, October 7, when Grant called police to ask them to do a health check, which they did after insisting he call and check hospitals first.
In the three hours that followed, Anthony across the road watched a patrol car arrive. A female and male officer approached the front door. With no answer to their knocking, the younger male officer shrugged off his belt and other gear and then wriggled through the toilet window.
And that’s when Grant got the call. He would later read the NZTA letter, speak to the neighbours and read his father’s final words. When he speaks of his dad dying, he talks of the “unnecessary death of Doug Domigan”.
“They didn’t need to treat him like this. He was fit and well.”
David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He first joined the Herald in 2004.
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