The late night anguish of a veteran police officer has been laid bare in an extended Facebook post reliving the raw emotion of informing a father his daughter has died in a car crash.
The entry on Waikato Police's Facebook page was composed at 3.53am this morning, as an officer of 20 years experience struggled to cope with the misery of a crash scene he had attended the day prior.
"Yesterday, when I attended another fatal between Matamata and Waharoa, well, it was just another and I emotionally went into that space that I go to when I attend," the officer wrote.
"I don’t do tears and I don't do emotion. I switch off and go into professional mode."
Describing how this particular crash was a breaking point of sorts for the officer, the post details a crash in which a woman died in a car carrying her husband and two children.
Traveling in a car ahead was the dead woman's father, who the officer meets at the crash scene.
"In my unemotional unattached professional manner, I got all the kids and victims details," the officer says.
"He then asked... "My daughter is dead isn't she?" Oh hell, how do I react to that? He was teary, and so was I.
"I don't do tears and I don't do emotion.... up until that point. I think I mumbled "yes she is".
"To be confronted by a dad who has lost his daughter, a husband who has lost his wife, and two kiddies who have lost their mum, it just brought the tragedy home."
To end the long post of despair at the carnage he has witnessed on Kiwi roads, the office admits he's not sure what "he's trying to achieve by sharing this".
In summing it up all he can offer is that the personal tragedy emergency services encounter through their work "affects everyone".
The constable who wrote the piece has his name withheld to protect his privacy.
Waikato Police shared the post with the hope that it would further enforce their road safety message"
When things go wrong it affects us, but we still have families intact to help us get through it and in this case, a little support from Facebook friends," Highway Patrol's Senior Sergeant Pete Van De Wetering wrote to preface the post.
"The victims of road crashes no longer have the same intact families and their lives have been shattered in so many ways, so their pain is far greater."
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