Still no answers for grieving dad after his son dies in a wastewater pond

Friday, 5 March 2021

Paul Jones has hired a private investigator to look into how his son drowned in a wastewater pond in Gore

A grieving Southland dad says he is becoming increasingly frustrated with a lack of communication from police who are reviewing the investigation into his son’s death.

More than two years after Paul Jones’ son Lachie was found dead in the Gore District Council’s wastewater ponds, he’s still searching for answers about how his son got there.

“There are so many unanswered questions and there are just no answers coming from them at all. It’s not like this is a burglary or something like that – this is the death of my three-year-old son.’’

Jones said a police officer had told him it could take a year for the investigation to be concluded.

* Police looking again at mysterious death in Gore**

He said Detective Inspector Shona Low was not taking his phone calls and Detective Inspector Stu Harvey was not replying to his emails. Both are involved with the reinvestigation into Lachie’s death.

Stuff put those allegations to police.

In response, a police spokesperson said: “parts of this reinvestigation are very complex and specialists are involved. Detective Inspector Stu Harvey spoke with Mr Jones last Wednesday and advised him of the particulars of the specialist information being obtained.’’

Three-year-old Lachlan Jones drowned in the Gore District Council's wastewater ponds in January 2019. Police are conducting a review into the case.

Police say they are not in a position to give a time frame on when the investigation will be completed.

A police spokesperson said: ‘’we have revisited a number of aspects of the file as part of the review. Once this is complete, any matters arising will be considered and addressed.’’

Jones said he found the lack of communication frustrating and unfair.

“They’ve said that this reinvestigation could take a year, which is kind of funny because they had their first investigation done in a few days. They haven’t even re-questioned me yet.’’

Police concluded that Lachie, who was wearing a high-vis vest, a police hat and had a full nappy, had wandered from his mother’s home on Salford St and drowned on the night he died.

In July 2019, police said no charges would be laid in relation to Lachlan’s death.

Jones’s lawyer wrote to police commissioner Andrew Coster and Southern Police District Commander Paul Basham in September 2019 to raise issues about the initial police investigation.

Paul Jones has hired a private investigator to look into why his son drowned in a wastewater pond in Gore

In October 2020, Detective Inspector Shona Low said police would conduct a review of the case.

Jones does not believe the police's theory that Lachie climbed a wooden fence or a metal gate and walked 1.2 km down a gravel road and through long grass and thistles, with bare feet, before drowning in the Gore District Council’s wastewater ponds.

That’s because he couldn’t see any marks or scratches on Lachie’s legs or feet when he visited him at the funeral home.

“There wasn’t a scratch on him.

“He was a clingy wee boy, and I don’t believe he would have walked out there on his own.’’

The lawyer’s letter to Coster, which Stuff has seen, says no scene examination of the area where Lachie’s body was found was carried out by police, and no attempt was made to retrace his steps or establish the route he took to get to the pond.

No timeline was established by police to establish when Lachie went missing, and there were delays in police interviewing witnesses, conflicting witness statements, and a lack of cellphone information.

The letter says one witness said she saw a little boy in a high viz vest at around 8.30pm, which was 30 minutes before his mother said he disappeared at 9pm.

Police dismissed the time difference, saying the witnesses’ phone hadn’t yet switched over from daylight savings, which had happened four months earlier.

There were also inconsistencies in the movements of two key witnesses, whose phone signals were polling on the other side of Gore to where they said they were in their witness statements, the letter says.

Jones has hired a private investigator to look into the circumstances of Lachies death.

“There are way too many i’s to be dotted and t’s to be crossed here, and I want answers for Lachie.’’