Driver who hid after crash faces 10 charges

The driver of a black BMW station wagon who fled the scene after a horrific smash in May will appear in Huntly District Court on August 28 charged with 10 offences.

He will face at least his third drink-driving charge, as well as three charges each of dangerous driving causing injury, driving with excess breath alcohol causing injury, and aggravated careless driving causing injury.

At the time of the multiple pile-up on May 12, he allegedly ran off and was later found hiding in bushes after the police Eagle helicopter was called in with heat-sensing equipment.

A few days later it was reported that the driver was a former police officer.

However, police will not identify the man, saying only that he is a 41-year-old from Auckland.

Three people were seriously hurt. Two were passengers who had been travelling in the BMW, one of them Mathew Peters, brother of multimillionaire property developer Jamie Peters and a relative of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Winston Peters.

The other person injured and trapped in the BMW was a female. The group were apparently returning from a day's duck-shooting, as a number of dead ducks lay strewn across the highway after the accident.

The third hospitalised victim was a female who was in another vehicle.

A further seven people, including two children, were involved in the crash.