[ad_1]
Tour guide Megan Phillips, 27, was with her family on a beach near Wilson Bay on January 21 when she heard a loud bang and felt “something is not quite right.”
He ran to the scene and saw that a tour bus had crashed on its side and the sight of the injuries sustained by some of the passengers was horrible.
Almost immediately, his attention was focused on the girl who was covered in blood and without both arms.
“She was incredibly calm, but her mom was screaming and her dad was frantically trying to find her arms cut off. They were absolutely scared,” Phillips said.
“They found an arm and an ice pack to put it in, but it’s so sad to read that they couldn’t put the arm back in.”
Phillips, trained in first aid, said she was one of two first responders on the scene, the other an off-duty nurse.
“We did what we could before the ambulances came and I was just with the girl, comforting her, and she was really calm and didn’t panic,” Phillips said.
“We were chatting in English. It felt like a lifetime for the emergency services to arrive … I gave her a little pat on the head and wished her well to be taken away.”
Tour bus driver Liang Fang ruled last week on his appeal against his sentence in Invercargill High Court.
Fang was driving a bus and trailer operated by Awing Travel NZ Ltd carrying 23 Chinese tourists when it crashed in Wilson Bay, near Queenstown.
He admitted the charges of negligent driving causing injury and had been sentenced in June in Queenstown District Court.
Fang was sentenced to 200 hours of community service and disqualified from driving for nine months.
In addition to the 10-year-old girl, who has legal name deletion, another woman also lost an arm and 20 people were treated for injuries by St John staff.
New Zealand immigration confirmed last week that the girl had returned to China with her family.
Philips said he was pleased to read that he was back in his home country.
“However, it hurt me to read how much I had broken the poor girl’s spirit. I think of her every day and how brave she was … her calm and logical mind were far beyond the expected of her years,” said.
“I want to send her words of love, inspiration and hope for her future and how I look forward to reading in the future about her as an amazing ballet dancer who overcame her disability to dance around the world.”
Phillips said she believed that with the support of her loving family, the girl will have what it takes to overcome what life had thrown at her.
In June, when the Herald visited the Auckland serviced apartment in Newmarket where the family was staying, the girl was afraid to leave her room.
Her mother said her daughter’s confidence and sense of security were shattered and that the once outgoing girl, who loved to dance, was now afraid to see people.
