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Wednesday 8 February 2023
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Being angry a ‘wasted emotion’ Daughter of man killed in cycling accident TRACY NEAL
Open Justice Reporter
Cyclist Tom Clendon loved to ride. But a trip to the supermarket to buy supplies for his elderly wife’s morning tea party was the last one he would ever make. The retiree was riding his e-bike down Champion Road on 8 April last year at the same time motorist Aaron Taylor was dropping his daughter at school. Taylor’s daughter had left a computer cable in the car and in his eagerness to get it to her he opened his car door just as Clendon rode by. The 86-year-old, who had treated himself to the e-bike five years earlier, was wearing a high-vis vest and a helmet, but it couldn’t save him. He was flung over the bike’s handlebars and landed on the road on his head and back. Taylor responded immediately, dialling 111 and providing comfort to Clendon who, at that stage, was not showing signs of a fatal
Jill Clendon’s father Tom died after being knocked off his bike on Champion Rd: Photo: Tracy Neal. brain injury. But the life of the beloved father, husband, mentor, grandad and former Air New Zealand industrial relations manager, who had
been with the airline through the worst of times including the terrible years of the Erebus disaster, was slowly ebbing away. “At the accident site he had ap-
parently been fine, but he’d hit his head and there was a bleed in the brain,” says Tom’s daughter Jill Clendon. In the quiet early hours of April
10, having been taken off life support, he died in a room at Nelson Hospital a week shy of his 87th birthday, with his daughter by his side. Jill says her years as a senior manager in the health sector didn’t prepare her for the personal blow; the tragic end to a long and busy life that hit the family hard. “We lost our dad, and although he was almost 87 and you might expect people at 87 to die at some point sooner rather than later, you don’t expect them to die like that. “He was out on his e-bike doing what he loved, but I don’t think that’s any consolation - the fact is he’s not with us any more and he probably could have been.” Neither was the tragedy lost on those in the Nelson District Court, where Taylor was sentenced last Thursday, having admitted a charge of careless operation of a vehicle causing death. Community Magistrate Brigid Corcoran described the loss of
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