Husband searches for answers at Coroner’s inquest into how his wife was crushed by a van in driveway death

A grieving husband is searching for answers about how his wife was killed when her work van rolled backwards and crushed her in a client’s driveway.

At a Coroner’s inquest yesterday, widower Svetlozar Kralev asked witnesses how and why the fully loaded van rolled back into his wife without her noticing it was moving.

Krasimira Kraleva, known as Krassy, died in October 2020 while visiting a client in the Auckland suburb of Massey during her job as a curtain maker and style consultant.

Senior Constable Gary Abbott, the crash investigator who arrived at the scene shortly after the incident, told the inquest the 52-year-old mother of two was found with the van’s key next to her on the ground.

From the evidence, he told the inquest she left the van parked in drive and the handbrake off.

“As she’s walking down the van, she didn’t realise the van started to roll and it hit her,” Abbott said, describing his determination of what was likely to have occurred.

He said scuffing on the driveway surface showed she had made contact with the van about one to two metres from where she was found.

But an inspection of the vehicle after the crash showed there was no fault with the parking brake.

“If you engaged it, it stayed on,” Abbott said.

However Svetlovar asked the investigator how the heavy van could have rolled without his wife noticing it, or stayed stationary on the sloping ground until it moved to hit her.

He questioned Abbott more than once about where his wife parked the van, which the investigator said they did not know.

“We’re unsure where your wife parked the van, we supposed she went up the flat area,” Abbott said.

Krasimira Kraleva died when her van rolled over and crushed her in the driveway of a house in October 2020. Photo / Supplied

Abbot had described the driveway which was sloping but nearly flat in one area.

The van, he explained, can run backwards even in drive gear because the handbrake was not engaged.

“The only way to stop the vehicle is [to] put it in park.”

Svetlozar said: “I have been many times to that area ... Not flat, it’s slopy.”

Abbott said it was possible that the vehicle moved slowly at first before picking up speed as it rolled backwards.

Svetlozar also said he knew the van “very well”.

Kraleva, who was described by colleagues after her death as a “beautiful person” and devoted mother, was working for Russells Curtains and Blinds and had arranged to meet with a client, David Lu, at his house in West Auckland on the day of the accident.

Lu told the inquest he was inside the house talking with property agent Gavin Han when they heard a scream and then a loud crash.

When they looked outside, they saw a van had crashed into a fence. Before it hit the fence, the van had crashed into an SUV, the inquest heard.

Han went to the driveway first before Lu heard him yelling, “Oh my god, oh my god!”

Lu then quickly came out and saw a woman under the van.

From the writing on the van, he realised the woman was Krassy and immediately called an ambulance.

Coroner Alison Mills reserved her findings from the inquest but acknowledged the difficulty of the proceedings for Svetlovar and thanked him for representing his family at the hearing.

Last July, another coroner called for more information to be made publicly available in the road code about wheel chocks after a woman was crushed under a car.

Maria Singh, 22, died at a home in Wainuiomata in April 2018 after the Ford she was trying to jumpstart with her sister ) rolled over the make-shift chock they were using and dragged her underneath it down the steep driveway.

Coroner Heidi Wrigley said Singh must have put down the handbrake, as it was found to be disengaged.

Krasimira Kraleva died after her work van crushed her in a client's driveway. Photos / Hayden Woodward and Supplied

After the death, NZTA reviewed the road code to make it more “user friendly”, but said it was “unlikely that information on the use of wheel chocks will be added” but Waka Kotahi would look to update its website, as recommended by the Coroner.

According to WorkSafe data, a 20-year-old health assistant was also killed on the job in Tasman after being run over by a vehicle in a driveway in December 2020.

New Zealand has historically had a high instance of driveway deaths and injuries, particularly for children.

Every two weeks in New Zealand a child is hospitalised after being injured by a car in a private driveway, according to available information published by Kāinga Ora.

While another five children are killed every year from being run over in driveways.