Coroner tears strip off safety authority

By DANIEL JACKSON

A coroner has accused the Maritime Safety Authority of obstructing his investigation into the death of a man on a Bill Hohepa fishing trip.

Kaitaia coroner Robin Fountain said delays in getting a hearing into the Far North drowning four years ago of Keith James Philpot, aged 53, and the way evidence was presented to him meant he was unable to make informed comment about what went wrong on the fishing expedition and rescue attempts.

Mr Philpot, of Otaki, was one of six passengers on a 5.5m aluminium boat, Hunky Dory.

Mr Hohepa, whose real name is Wayne Wills, was at the controls when the boat capsized in a choppy sea during a rock fishing trip in Doubtless Bay in June 1996.

Some passengers made it to shore, but Mr Philpot drowned.

Mr Wills and another man were rescued after more than eight hours in the water.

In March 1999, a jury in the Auckland District Court found Mr Wills not guilty of causing unnecessary risk to people and property.

Mr Fountain completed his inquest into the death last October.

In his just-released report, he said the authority had obstructed his inquiries to search-and-rescue groups and also failed to address why there was more than a two-hour delay between a signal from a locator beacon being picked up and the first sweep by airborne searchers.

"The obvious inference is that if the search had been commenced 2 1/4 hours earlier the deceased may still have been alive when found.

"This delay has not been explained, nor is it now explainable because too much time has passed since the tragedy."

Mr Fountain said he gave the authority the opportunity to make submissions to his report.

The authority then sought to introduce new evidence that should have been heard at the inquest and was couched in "inappropriate terms which at times came close to contempt of court," he said.

Authority director Russell Kilvington rejected Mr Fountain's comments: "We simply don't agree."

Mr Kilvington said the authority had investigated the drowning and tried to prosecute Mr Wills as a result.

It accepted that Mr Wills was found not guilty by the court, but its views on why the drowning happened had not changed.

He said the authority did not coordinate the rescue. That was done by the National Rescue Coordination Centre in Wellington, but the authority did not consider that the delay in locating the beacon, known as an EPIRB, was an issue.

"There was nothing insufficient or untoward in terms of the process."

The beacon was an older type that did not give the name of the vessel it came from and needed two satellite references to reveal its location.

The satellite system could not pinpoint the Hunky Dory's location until more than an hour after the capsize.

"We didn't investigate the detail of the issue because it is not unusual for that sort of EPIRB to take that amount of time."

After the first report of the beacon sounding, attempts had been made to ring around local marinas and boat clubs to see if any boats were late or missing.

Mr Wills had not filed a day plan so no one was aware the Hunky Dory was missing.

Mr Philpot's widow, Lynn Philpot, was not happy with the report and said she was considering legal action.

She felt the safety authority had been made the scapegoat.

"I am very angry that Hohepa [Wills] has not been made accountable and the justice system has let this happen."

Mr Wills, who still runs a fishing guide business, said he felt he had done all that was possible at the time.

"As far as I'm concerned, I got found not guilty in a court of law.

"I did everything I could do. I couldn't have done much more."

He said publicity about the death had seriously damaged his business.

"They crucified me at the time of the accident and probably because of some of that flak my business went down the toilet for four years."

The coroner's comments appeared to take some of the blame off him and focused more on the delay before rescue, said Mr Wills.

"Even two hours would have been enough to give the guy another chance."