David McGill said the fatal accident happened right outside Paekakariki School.
David McGill said the fatal accident happened right outside Paekakariki School.
A Paekakariki man says he felt "the breath of death" as a car sped past him on a quiet, residential street, only to hit a woman a split second later.
David McGill, who lives on the corner of Wellington Rd and Ocean Rd, was walking towards his house when he saw a "black muscle car" speed past him on the newly sealed road.
"It seemed to me way too fast," he said, noting there was loose gravel from the resealing.
The woman was thrown metres away from the car, down a steep bank.
Moments later, McGill heard an "almighty thump", and turned around to see the car had crashed into a tree down a bank outside Paekakariki School.
Approaching the scene, he saw a group of people gathered around the prone body of a woman, whose body was lying about 10m from the car at the bottom of the steep bank.
Police said yesterday the woman died after the crash.
Broken glass shows where the car hit the tree outside Paekakariki School.
Though the accident happened on Sunday and there was no school, children were still playing at the school on the basketball courts.
McGill said he saw a 12-year-old boy at the scene who told him he'd seen the whole thing.
He said there was about 15 people gathered around the crash site.
McGill was unsure whether the driver lost control on the loose gravel, or whether he swerved to avoid the woman, who he believed was a jogger.
"It was very distressing because I felt this, as I say in my blog, this breath of death. This car whishing past and literally the next second there's a crash that actually does kill someone. And it could have very easily been me because I was only metres away, I guess."
Marks on the road and footpath show the car crossed the right lane and crashed part way down a steep bank.
The accident was a "terrible incident where an innocent woman was killed by a high-powered car so unnecessarily in a quiet, residential street ... It's just one of those awful things that shouldn't happen, and once again it's that message about speeding."
Another nearby resident did not hear or see the crash, but said he'd heard the car speed by his house.
"I heard the car speeding past and was thinking, 'that's going a bit fast'," he said.
Accident were not something that happened often in Paekakariki, which he said was a quiet place.
He said it was possible the woman might have been a walker or tramper coming through to access the new walkway that had been opened in the area.
A staff member at Paekakariki School did not have anything to say about the accident, but said they did not have any problems with people speeding around the school.
