An 11-year-old girl playing with friends on a Waikato bridge has been struck and killed by a train.
The accident happened about 6pm yesterday near the bridge on Great South Rd, not far from Old Taupiri Rd, in Ngaruawahia.
The girl was not able to get out of the freight train's way quick enough and was hit and knocked to the ground below.
Western Waikato police area prevention manager Senior Sergeant Dave Hall said the girl was with a group of friends at the time and it was unclear if they heard the horn first or saw the train before they started running.
"From what we can establish it looks like they were on the tracks and have seen or heard the horn from the train from the south, as it was heading north, and they tried to run along the tracks," he said.
"As the train has reached the north end of the bridge it struck one girl and has knocked her from the railway lines and she has fallen on to the ground beside the track and has died at the scene as a result of her injuries."
Some of the girl's family arrived at the scene shortly afterwards, Hall said.
A post-mortem examination would be carried out today.
The driver of the train - which was travelling from Hamilton to Auckland - was being supported.
A spokeswoman for his employer, KiwiRail, said: “The locomotive driver is understandably distressed and as is normal practice, has been relieved of duties".
It was the first death on the tracks at Ngaruawahia since 2002 when 9-year-old Jayden Nerihana Tepu died when he lost his footing on the bridge and was struck by a train.
Hall was unsure how many near-misses there had been.
"In conjunction with KiwiRail, we've been working to educate people that the train tracks and the bridge is not a safe place to be for kids to play on and trying to encourage, by way of education, to stay away from the bridge itself."
He said despite it being a long hot summer, anecdotally, the number of complaints about people being on the bridge had been low compared to previous years.
"Up until now we haven't been receiving as many complaints as we have had in the past. It had eased off in relation to bridge jumpers and people in the tracks. It has already been calmer but this is a tragedy right at the end of summer."
He knew that amongst some locals that playing on the bridge was almost a right of passage, but police had been working to inform locals of the risks.
Many measures have been taken to ensure children do not climb on to a rail bridge in Ngaruawahia, but fences are pulled down and young people ignore the warnings, KiwiRail chief executive Peter Reidy said.
Higher fences, trespass notices and even a speed restriction for trains have been put in place but they don't work, he said.
"Young children are accessing the track to jump off the bridge [into the river], so this [death] has been many years in the making," he told RNZ today.
"Youth will use cars to pull the fencing off and even if we restrict the speeds, they climb on the trains and jump off them."
Reidy said police, the local community, council and KiwiRail will meet to discuss further measures and more education for local people about using the bridge to dive into the river.
He said another bridge is an option, but that would still be used to walk over or dive off in the same manner.
"The key, for us, is to limit the access to the railway line."
- NZ Herald and NZN
