Body confirmed as that of missing motorist

Alex Binns. Photo / Supplied

A body found in a crashed car near Napier yesterday has been formally identified as missing motorist Alex Binns, police say.

Mr Binns left the township of Matiere on Thursday morning with plans to drive straight home to Hastings and give his 4-year-old granddaughter a belated birthday present.

But last night, a helicopter searching for Mr Binns found a car down a bank off State Highway 5 at Te Haroto, 70km northwest of Napier.

"The terrain was too steep and enclosed for the helicopter to get any closer to the vehicle so police sent a land search and rescue team into the area to check out the sighting," a police spokeswoman said.

"The team located the car which contained the body of a man.

"It was not possible to airlift the deceased from the area so the rescue team carried him out on foot."

A Hastings police spokesman today said the body had been formally identified as Mr Binns.

A post mortem would be carried out and the police serious crash unit was investigating, he said.

Mr Binns, 69, had spent a week in Matiere, near Taumarunui, house-sitting a farm for friends Rod and Moyra Brears.

He was due to return to the home he shared with his daughter and her family on Friday but set off a day early after his friends returned on Wednesday night.

"They said he was happy to be coming home," his daughter Karalynn Twist told the Herald before the discovery of the car.

"He had a present for his granddaughter in the car because it [the previous Monday] was her birthday."

Because Mr Binns was not expected to leave that day no one realised he had failed to make the 3-hour trip home and it was Friday afternoon before his daughter began to worry.

When she learned that he had left the previous morning, she contacted the police. Mrs Twist said it was unlikely her retired father had decided to go anywhere else on the way home because he had meat in the car from the farm. "He would have been coming straight home because of that - it was quite a hot day on Thursday."

Police, friends and family searched the route he would have normally taken - both on the ground and from a helicopter - but had failed to find any sign of Mr Binns or his car until last night. Mrs Twist said her father was a creature of habit and in good health.

He was also very conscious about having a full tank of petrol, oil and water so she did not expect that there would have been any problems with his car.

Sergeant Grant Alabaster said there had been a possible sighting of Mr Binns at a service station in Tokaanu around lunchtime on Thursday.

- With NZPA