Mys­te­ri­ous death to go be­fore coro­ner

The death of 22-year-old Rut­ger Hale, killed by a mys­tery ob­ject while driv­ing be­tween Wanaka and Lake Hawea, will be ex­am­ined by a coro­ner this week.

Hale was driv­ing with his girl­friend Danielle Oylear on State High­way 6 on Oc­to­ber 24 when an ob­ject smashed through the wind­screen of his Subaru car, hit him on the head and ex­ited through the rear win­dow.

The ob­ject has never been iden­ti­fied, de­spite ex­ten­sive searches and sci­en­tific analy­ses.

Oylear said she hoped the hear­ing would bring new in­for­ma­tion on the case to light and that the coro­ner did not close the case as cold.

‘‘I’m hop­ing the coro­ner dis­cov­ers it’s still worth in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I think we want more an­swers be­fore it’s closed,’’ she said.

The in­quest into Hale’s death will be held in Queen­stown on Fri­day.

An in­quest into the death of Queen­stown twoyear-old Vi­o­let Waples is also sched­uled for this week.

Vi­o­let’s body was found face-down in Lake Wakatipu after it ap­peared she crawled through a gap in the fence of her Kelvin Heights home and wan­dered off to­ward the lake on Au­gust 4 last year.

She had been with her mother Alana on the morn­ing of her death and drowned less than 100 me­tres from their home. The tod­dler’s death gripped the town and Vi­o­let’s fam­ily were left "ab­so­lutely dev­as­tated’’.