Nightmare wake-up call

By Dean Taylor

In the early hours of Sunday morning Brian and Christine Jeffs got the news every parent of a teenager dreads. The couple’s 15-year-old son, Nicholas Samuel Thomas, had died at the wheel of his car on Cambridge Road less than a kilometre from home. The news was so tragic because the Jeffs thought Nicholas was asleep in his own bed.

“At about 9pm Nick said goodnight and took himself off to bed,” says Mr Jeffs. “After the police came around we checked his room and he had done the old pillows under the blankets trick.”

His decision to sneak from the house and drive to a party in Hamilton was not typical of the young man - but as his Dad says - typical of a teenager.

Nicholas was a good kid - a good student and talented at his two loves, music and cricket. He had been playing cricket that day, filling in for a team to get in some match play to prepare for a season with Hamilton Boy’s High 2nd XI. Nicholas was rapt to have made the team and was wanting to have an impressive season.

Sometime, possibly that night, he decided to sneak off to a 16-year-old girl’s party in Hamilton his friends were at. His plan almost worked, until he fell asleep at the wheel on Cambridge Road near Pekerau Crescent and drove straight ahead into a power pole and brick fence pillar.

Police believe he died instantly. Neighbours who heard the crash came to his aid immediately.

Mr Jeffs says normally Nicholas would have asked to go to the party, and he or his wife would have picked him up. He thinks a recent talk about schoolwork and impending exams probably made the youngster think he wouldn’t have been allowed to go, so he made his own way.

As well as his cricket successes, which saw him recently on a trip to Brisbane, Nicholas was a more than promising musician. He had been drummer for the successful Waikato Youth Symphonic Band for many years, and also played for the New Zealand Secondary Schools Symphony Orchestra for the past two years and this year he also spent a week performing in Vanuatu performing with the Boys High Jazz Band.

The serious crash unit is investigating, and at this stage police can only say it appears as if Nicholas simply fell asleep.

Nicholas’ funeral is on Thursday.