KEY POINTS:
A sentence of community work for a Stagecoach bus driver whose bus allegedly hit a Chinese visitor has outraged the Chinese community and led to a call for a diplomatic protest by China.
The visitor, Rongfa Jiang, 53, died in hospital after the incident in Dominion Rd in April.
The bus driver, Tu Tukino, 45, was sentenced in the Auckland District Court last Thursday to 40 hours community work for failing to stop and ascertain injury.
Judge John Hole said Mr Tukino should not feel responsible for Mr Jiang's death. Stagecoach said at the time that Mr Tukino heard a noise and stopped the bus further along the road, got out to see what had happened, but could not see the injured man and drove off.
Stagecoach's Wellington-based chief executive, Bruce Emson, is flying to Auckland today to express "sympathy" to Mr Jiang's widow and son, and will make "an offer to the family to assist with the costs they have incurred".
But he said his offer should not be called an "apology" because Stagecoach did not admit any guilt for Mr Jiang's death.
The family's lawyer, Jan Wu, said she would ask the Chinese Consulate in Auckland to make a diplomatic protest to the New Zealand Government about the case.
The honorary president of the New Zealand-Beijing Fellowship Society, former Act MP Kenneth Wang, said he was one of about a dozen community leaders who were called to a meeting about the case at the consulate on Friday.
He said the original incident was reported in China and he personally saw it on Hong Kong television.
"This story will be told widely internationally if we are not dealing with it properly, particularly back in China," he said.
"Our education industry will suffer because their son was studying here at the time. We are sending a signal to the world that if you come to this country, if you are injured you are lucky because we will take care, but if you are dead it's too bad."
The dead man's son, Jiang Hao, a student at Auckland University, declined to comment yesterday. But Mr Wang said the student's mother, Mrs Jiang, had cancelled her return ticket to China because she was unhappy with the court ruling.
A police officer in charge of the case, Sergeant Matt Ford, said police would not appeal against the sentence because no witnesses had come forward who actually saw Mr Jiang hit, even though there were reported to be eight passengers on the bus.
"There were a number of witnesses who came forward in the larger picture of things but no one physically saw the impact with the pedestrian," Mr Ford said.
Mr Wang, who led a public appeal which raised $4460 for the family after Mr Jiang's death, made another appeal yesterday for witnesses.
"What I'm going to do is call for more help from our community, either financially or if you know anyone who can provide further evidence or useful information, please step forward," he said.
Chinese Herald columnist Simon Kan said Stagecoach should apologise to Mr Jiang's family. "Whether he was in the right or wrong, the bus company showed no sympathy, nothing. They didn't even apologise. They didn't even send a letter," he said.
But Mr Emson, who took the top job at Stagecoach five weeks ago, said the company had tried to contact Mrs Jiang through Victim Support soon after Mr Jiang's death to offer to cover some of the family's costs.
He said he had finally contacted Mrs Jiang through her lawyer last week and intended to offer her "not an insubstantial sum" towards her costs.
He said Mr Tukino was "a victim in this tragedy as well" and faced the court "with great dignity".
The Chinese Consulate did not return the Herald's calls.
