Police name ambulance officer, driver killed in crash

3:22 pm on 19 September 2022
Wellington free ambulance

Photo: RNZ / Diego Opatowski

The names of the driver and ambulance officer killed in a crash in Cambridge last week have been released by police.

They died after the two vehicles collided on Tirau Rd, Cambridge, on Wednesday morning.

Deon Hadley, a 33-year-old from Auckland also known as Deon Johnson-Hadley, died at the scene.

Ambulance officer Susan Cutler, of Rotorua, passed away in hospital on Thursday.

Cutler, a Patient Transfer Officer, was travelling from Hamilton to Rotorua when the crash occurred.

She was airlifted to Waikato Hospital and died with family by their side on Thursday afternoon.

Cutler had been with St John's for 55 years, starting within youth and eventually moving into the ambulance service, where she was an ambulance officer for 27 years.

St John chief executive Dan Ohs said last week the loss of their officer, while on duty, was hard to stomach.

"The amount of patients this person has come across, dealt with, the people they have touch, it is immeasurable."

A registered nurse who was travelling as the attendant in the ambulance was also injured in the crash. There were no patients on board at the time.

Police extended their condolences to Hadley and Cutler's families. An investigation into the crash continues.