Victims of double fatality identified

Emergency services attend the scene of a fatal car crash in Pukekohe. Photo / Paul Estcourt

A woman and her mother are dead after the car they were in drove straight through a roundabout and crashed into a tree south of Auckland this morning.

The crash was on the corner of Harris Rd and Edinburgh Rd, Pukekohe, at 10.40am.

The driver of the vehicle was tonight identified by police as Meryle Iris Lovell, 61, and the passenger was her mother Laura Muriel Hays, 85.

The driver was dead by the time emergency services arrived and the passenger died en route to hospital, Senior Sergeant John Yearbury said.

A number of people witnessed the crash but were unable to help. Firefighters had to cut both women from the wrecked Nissan stationwagon.

Mr Yearbury said the driver may have crashed because of a medical condition.

"I'm only coming to that conclusion because A) they look elderly and B) why did they go straight through a roundabout and hit a tree?

"It's just speculation on my part at the moment but I'm reasonably confident that's what it'll turn out to be."

Mr Yearbury said the crash illustrated how devastating it could be when vehicles crashed into stationary objects.

"Mate, if you get stopped dead when you're travelling at 50km/h you're in trouble, especially if you hit something like a solid tree - this was a big pohutukawa or something, it wasn't moving anywhere."

The police serious crash unit was investigating.

- NZPA