The Star: January 25, 2024

Thursday January 25 2024 The Star
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz
after debilitating crash
FAMILY
ALBUM:
Members
of the
Doherty
family
offered
to aid
Dominique
Vallette’s
recovery
before she
was able
to return
home.
Vallette, trapped in the
wreckage, realised she was
in difficulty after regaining
consciousness.
“I knew I had a problem with
my spine, I couldn’t feel my
limbs, I understood that,” she
said.
Rescuers cut her free and then
a snowstorm prevented her from
being airlifted to Christchurch
Hospital, the journey by
ambulance taking a painstaking
24-to-36 hours.
Vallette also has vivid
recollections of the spinal unit,
ward 13B – and the love and
support of locals, who read of
her plight in The Star.
“By the time I arrived in hospital
there had been a newspaper
article saying a young French
girl with no family here had
been in a car crash.
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“Soon my part of the room was
covered in flowers. People wanted
to comfort me. That’s the sort of
thing you cannot forget.”
Vallette also remembers
names, and hopes hers will
jog memories for Doherty and
Jorgensen family members and
an acquaintance of Dacombe,
Kay Perkins.
It was Dacombe who decided,
without prompting, to contact
a radio operator in Noumea to
alert Vallette’s father Rene.
Vallette stayed with Jamie
and Helen Doherty, and their
children Rosemary and Phillip,
when she was an outpatient.
Ross Jorgensen, son of Shirley,
was a Christchurch-based friend
of Adams who visited her in
hospital.
She met Adams once when
he was in London but they lost
touch decades ago.
Barbara Chapman, a teacher
in her early 20s, spoke basic
French and kept Vallette
company.
Vallette is also keen to find
young nurse Sue Osborne, who
would strum Cat Stevens (now
Yusuf Islam) and James Taylor
songs on her guitar.
“I was lying flat, I couldn’t do
anything but I could chat and
sing,” she said.
Osborne’s bedside manner
encapsulated Vallette’s care by
• Dominique Vallette
can be reached at:
dovalmi78@gmail.com
nursing staff.
“They gave me time and
friendship. No one ever made me
feel like I would remain in that
state. They never killed the hope.”
Doctors were not as optimistic
warning she would, at best, leave
hospital on crutches.
“I couldn’t believe it, when
you’re 18 you just want to live. I
had the conviction I would walk
out,” she said.
“After three months I felt a
movement, very small, in the big
toe on my right foot. The doctors
and physiotherapists all agreed
I’d been dreaming, but it was a
sign the nerves were healing.”
Vallette astounded doctors
by only needing a back brace
when she was discharged in
December, 1972.
Happily she reports no
lingering issues with her spine,
pointing out: “I managed to give
birth to three children, usually
it’s rather hard on the back when
you’re pregnant but I had no
problem in that way.”
Christchurch’s spinal unit
opened at Christchurch Hospital
in 1964 and transferred to its
current location at Burwood
Hospital in 1979.
NEWS 19
Parents want
son’s death
recognised as
a war crime
THE PARENTS of a former
Christchurch aid worker want their
son’s death to be recognised as a
war crime after a coroner found his
colleague, who he was with at the
time, was unlawfully killed.
Christopher Parry was with New
Zealand aid worker Andrew
Bagshaw when he was killed in the
Soledar region of Ukraine a year
ago.
Post mortem reports that Parry
and Andrew Bagshaw were both
killed by gunshot wounds, rather
than the initial official explanation
of their death, which was their
vehicle was hit by artillery fire.
Coroner Darren Salter, at the
Oxfordshire’s Coroners Court,
cited evidence the Wagner group
– a Russian-state funded private
military company – was involved
in the killing.
Andrew Bagshaw’s parents,
Dame Sue and Professor Phil
Bagshaw, have always maintained
their son was the victim of a
war crime and they want it to be
investigated by the International
Criminal Court at the Hague.
‘“The important thing
now is that we need to get
actual evidence,” Dame Sue
told Morning Report. – RNZ
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