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The father of a teenager who spent a night in a ditch after being flung from a crashed car believes his son was left to die after police officers failed to find him at the scene.
Jordan Bowler, 17, was lying in a drain on Napier Road, near Palmerston North, with head injuries when his father found him nine hours after the crash.
He and two friends were travelling in the Ford Falcon when it failed to take a sweeping bend and hit a tree, throwing him 28 metres and onto the other side of the road.
Police arrived around 12.35am and searched with torches for more than 30 minutes but failed to spot the seriously injured Feilding teen lying in the drain in the pelting rain.
Police said yesterday that they had been told only two people were in the car, and with the rain, mist and darkness, failed to spot Mr Bowler.
Witnesses said the other two passengers had been taken to hospital by another car passing by.
One of the passengers remained in hospital last night.
Mr Bowler's father, Michael Cribb, received a text message from his son's girlfriend saying there had been a crash and she couldn't find 'Jordy'.
At around 9.30am the family went to the scene and Mr Cribb saw his son's body, and thought he was dead.
He was taken to Palmerston North Hospital and put on life support in intensive care.
Mr Cribb told the Dominion Post yesterday that he could not understand why his son was not found immediately after the crash.
"How come the police couldn't find him? I just walked straight to the spot. All they had to do was shine the light on the ground. They cleared the accident scene, while my son was lying in the drain.
"I just blame the officers that were there that night, not the police. They didn't do their job properly. I believe they basically just left him there to die."
He said he was "gutted" his son's friends had left him there.
- NZPA
