A Rotorua man who was on the scene within seconds of a road worker being shot dead near Tokoroa says the victim was found with a hole in his head.

The family of a roadworker gunned down on an isolated South Waikato road were last night grieving for a cheeky, lovely and gentle man.

Police investigating the fatal shooting of road worker George Taiaroa near Tokoroa yesterday say no one heard gun shots.

A man has been shot and killed this afternoon in a forestry area at Kinleith, near Tokoroa, with police launching a homicide inquiry.

An elderly woman was seriously injured in a three-car crash which closed northbound traffic on State Highway 2 between Wellington and Lower Hutt.

Police trying to piece together the last known movements of a Tauranga man have received another confirmed sighting.

A 16-month-old toddler has been hit and killed by a car in Rotorua this evening.

An Eketahuna farmer's wife was seriously injured in a two-car crash yesterday.

Inner-city Auckland traffic was brought to a virtual standstill after a motorway crash - gridlock that the Automobile Association described as the worst it had seen.

Tauranga's longest serving paramedic has decided to call it a day after a 48-year association with St John.

A helicopter searched at sea for a man seriously bleeding after he fell through a boat window - only for the man to be found on his boat back in the bay.

When 3-year-old Corban Martin suffered a severe allergic reaction to cashew nuts, his mother was dismayed to be told there were no ambulances available to take him to hospital.

What caused a Hororata pilot to fly his glider into the side of a mountain near Omarama in a fatal crash in January last year may never be definitively known.

Homeowners could have to pay more in Fire Service levies under a proposed shake-up of the way the service is funded.

A large scrub fire that endangered buildings in Taupo yesterday has been extinguished.

A scrub fire in Taupo which endangered buildings in the area this afternoon appears to have been deliberately lit.

Police have released the name of the man killed in a crash near Kaiapoi on Friday.

An academic says the loophole that lets people buy "lethal" air rifles should be closed following the death of a south Auckland teenager.

A teenager has died after being shot with an airgun he and four friends were playing with while they were drinking at a Manurewa home last night.

Three divers needed rescuing after drifting out to sea on an inflatable boat without lifejackets, a radio, cellphones or an anchor.

Almost $10,000 worth of specialist tools and 10kg of copper cabling has been stolen from the hangar used by the organisation behind the Northland Electricity rescue helicopter.

A fisherman who died after being swept down the Motu River has been identified as 41-year-old Benjamin Robert Tekira from Waimana, near Whakatane.