Loader Operator `didn't See Boy'

Newcastle Herald

Saturday June 22, 2002

By JASON BARTLETT

THE driver of a front-end loader that crushed a Windale boy to death in a sand quarry has told Newcastle District Court he never saw the boy until he backed his loader away.

The jury heard Wayne Kelvin Lavender say yesterday he had no idea 13-year-old Michael Milne of Windale was hit by his loader until it had happened.

The incident allegedly happened while Mr Lavender was chasing four boys through bush in the Rainbow Sands quarry at Redhead about 1.30pm on October 2 last year.

The jury watched two videos of Mr Lavender, one an interview with police, the second a police walk-through around the scene.

Mr Lavender, who did not take the stand, has pleaded not guilty to charges of feloniously slaying Michael and driving his front-end loader in a dangerous manner causing death.

The jury heard Mr Lavender, 44, from Whitebridge, tell Hunter Crash Investigation officer Sgt Gerard Lawson he had gone into the bush to warn four teenagers he had seen playing on a sand pile off the property.

He said he lost sight of the four, all aged under 15, as he drove along an old bush track onto a disused road.

He then went back into the bush in an effort to find the children.

`I tried to get them to come,' he said.

`To get out of there, you know.'

Speaking on video at the scene, Mr Lavender detailed how he spotted Michael and another boy soon after he re-entered the bush.

He left the track and drove into a vegetated area, pushing down several small trees with the bucket of his loader.

`You could see the kids here ... What were they doing?' Sgt Lawson asked.

`They were tearing off through the bush,' Mr Lavender said.

`Were they running?'

`Yeah,' he replied.

Mr Lavender said he estimated the speed of his vehicle at about 3kmh to 4kmh.

He said the bucket of his loader would have been about a metre from the ground.

When asked how his vision was at that point, he said: `I could see the plant, I could see how to get back to the plant.'

But he said he had lost sight of one of the children.

Mr Lavender said the other boy had turned around and said something to him but he could not hear him and began to reverse.

That was when he had spotted Michael, who had crouched behind a tea-tree, lying on the ground.

`When I backed back ? that's where I seen him, laying right there,' he said pointing.

`(There were) trees on him so I pulled the trees away from him and felt (for) a pulse and he didn't have any pulse.'

The court heard testimony from Sen Constable Owen Smith of Belmont Police who said he had spoken to Mr Lavender in the Rainbow Sands meal room after the accident.

Mr Lavender had told him he had chased the boys because there had been a lot of vandalism on the site.

The trial continues on Monday.

© 2002 Newcastle Herald

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