Police officer killed by car worried about traffic management that night, court told

Source: Radio New Zealand

The police officer critically injured by the car that hit and killed his colleague Lyn Fleming, says she told him she was worried not enough had been done to manage traffic in central Nelson that New Year’s Eve.

Senior Sergeants Adam Ramsay and Lyn Fleming were on foot patrol together in Buxton Square, overseeing the policing operation for New Year’s Eve, when they were hit by a car driven by Hayden Tasker.

“I heard the engine noise, I remember thinking, that’s really loud,” Ramsay said in his police interview, which was played to the Christchurch High Court on Tuesday.

“I just looked in the direction of the sound and just saw a set of headlights and had enough time to sort of formulate the thought, you know, this this could be bad.”

Tasker, 33, is on trial for murdering Fleming and seriously injuring Ramsay in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

He has admitted three charges of dangerous driving, but has denied that he intended to kill or hurt the pair.

Tasker’s defence counsel have said he was drunk and depressed at the time and the tragedy was a result of him trying to take his own life without thinking about his actions, while the Crown has argued Tasker had murderous intent as he later said he was aiming for police and he was angry at them for how they had handled an earlier assault.

Ramsay was on foot patrol with Fleming on Bridge Street in Nelson before the crash, the pair were in charge of the New Year’s Eve policing operation in Nelson.

He said he had been kneeling down, talking to another officer in a patrol car in Buxton Square around 2am, when he heard the engine and saw headlights.

The next thing he remembered was coming to, laying on his side in the carpark. He was groggy and had blood on his face. He thought he must have been hit by a car and did a scan of his body to check for injuries.

“I was cognisant of what was going on around me. I could hear voices, I could hear people rushing around doing stuff and I thought, well, I think I’m actually in a pretty good place. Like, my mental faculty seems to be intact. Physically, I seem to be okay.”

He was taken to hospital where he was found to have a dislocated and fractured shoulder, two gashes on either side of his head that left his skull visible, and numerous cuts and abrasions, some that went through several layers of skin.

The fatal crash that left three others injured

Ramsay said it was when he got to the Nelson Hospital emergency department that he became aware of the scale of what had happened and that other police officers, including Fleming, had been injured.

“As I lay there, I became increasingly confident that a lot of what I had was what I described as sort of paint and panel damage. It was a lot of relatively superficial injuries, the dislocated shoulder, cuts to my head. I’d lost a reasonable amount of skin off this arm.

“I had a huge amount of nicks, cuts and divots on my hands and arms, my knees, but no other significant injuries, which was a miracle in the circumstances.”

Ramsay said it wasn’t until he was visited by Tasman District Commander superintendent Tracey Thompson a couple of hours later, that he learnt of the extent of Fleming’s injuries.

“The assessment was that she had suffered unsurvivable injuries and that she was unlikely to make it but they were waiting on family to come from Wellington so they could make that decision.

“That really sort of brought home the reality of how this could have gone for me as well because at that stage it was just, the injuries I had were relatively superficial in the grand scheme of things.”

A police officer in the car that was rammed by Tasker after he hit Fleming and Ramsay, suffered a concussion, while a member of the public who had gone to Ramsay’s aid was also injured when the patrol car was shunted towards her.

Ramsay said he knew it would have been tough for the police staff working that night who witnessed the crash, had to care for two injured officers, manage the scene and deal with Tasker.

“I felt really sorry for them because Lyn and I were there specifically to take charge in a critical incident and we were both incapacitated so it sort of fell back to the staff and the sergeants that were there and the CIB that attended very promptly to gain control over that situation and deal with it.

“There was a number of people there who had the worst night that you can have as a police officer confronted by something like that.”

An experienced police officer, Lyn Fleming was unhappy with traffic management that night

Ramsay said police had a crowded places strategy which detailed a vehicle intrusion attack in a crowded area was a significant risk to the public.

He said Fleming, a police officer of almost 40 years, had planned previous New Year’s Eve policing operations with manned cordons, that stopped traffic flow into the city.

“She was disappointed to find that they’d resorted to cones and so with her we went round to make sure that it was clear that traffic shouldn’t be entering [the CBD].”

Ramsay said Fleming indicated to him that she wasn’t satisfied with the measures taken to manage traffic, she spoke to traffic management staff on Selwyn Place that night and she would be raising it later.

“She made it very clear to me that this wasn’t consistent with what she had been told or was expecting and that she would make sure that this was remedied for the next year.”

The jury spent hours on Tuesday being taken through photographs, then video footage of the crash by Detective James Loh.

The chaos and confusion was clear in the footage taken from a community patrol car, nearby security cameras and from people’s phones who happened to be in the carpark at the time.

The jury also heard from police geospatial manager Justin Harris, who used CCTV, cellphone footage, crash reports and aerial drone imagery to map the path of Tasker’s vehicle and two police patrol cars, through Buxton Square during the early hours of that morning.

The trial continues, with more than 40 witnesses to be heard over three weeks.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand