KEY POINTS:
Police investigations are underway after a 14-year-old boy on a joyride in a stolen car died after a police chase through the Western Bay of Plenty and Waikato yesterday.
The Rotorua youth died when the stolen car he was driving ran over police spikes and smashed side-on into an oncoming van on State Highway 28 near Te Poi, between Matamata and Putaruru, about 2.30pm.
The three-litre 1987 Holden Commodore saloon he and two other teenagers were travelling in was stolen in Rotorua the night before.
A witness, who didn't want to be named, said the accident happened outside her front gate.
"My boyfriend saw the police put the spikes down. By the time I got there, the car had gone over the spikes, the tyres had exploded and it had crashed right outside the gate."
A 15-year-old girl trapped in the car was calling for help.
"She held her hands out to us. She was pinned in the back seat. I held her hand for about 30 seconds to a minute ... I could see the guy was dying in her lap. It was horrible.
"The driver was crushed in half and thrown into the back seat. He was lying in her lap and she was saying, 'I've hurt my leg, I might not walk'."
Police started chasing the car after the three occupants left a petrol station in Papamoa, on the outskirts of Tauranga, without paying for fuel.
Taupo area commander Inspector Kevin Taylor said staff began chasing the car about 2.18pm.
But they soon stopped the pursuit as it was too dangerous in a busy 70km/h area.
Officers resumed the pursuit further down the road.
"It was an old Commodore. It was struggling to get up the hill. It was not a high-speed chase," Mr Taylor said.
The top speed reached was about 130km/h.
Firefighters had to cut the body of the 14-year-old from the wreckage.
The 15-year-old girl was flown to Waikato Hospital by air ambulance with a broken leg.
An ambulance spokeswoman said it took 30 to 45 minutes to extricate the dead boy and the injured girl.
Another witness, who declined to be named, said: "It was terrible carnage. The police spikes were still lying on the road."
The other passenger in the car and the driver of the oncoming van were not seriously injured but were taken to Waikato Hospital for observation.
More than a quarter of police chases end in crashes.
In the year to last November there were 2089 pursuits. Of these, 539 resulted in accidents and 579 were abandoned. Twenty-five of the crashes resulted in injuries and three people were killed.
Police were forced to defend their policy when three Auckland teenagers died during a chase on Christmas Eve.
Their car, driven by a 16-year-old, crashed into a tree after a police chase reached 190km/h from central Auckland to the Western Springs/St Lukes offramp.
