In findings released on Friday, coroner Sue Johnson ruled Branje’s death an accidental drowning. She avoided making any direct recommendations, but said Emily “would have had a chance of survival” if she had been wearing a life jacket.
Supplied
Emily and her mother Janine Branje. Emily’s mother, Janine Branje, had read the coroner’s report, and said she was happy to learn her daughter remembered all her water safety lessons. “I was pleased to read she did absolutely everything she was taught to do, she flipped onto her back, she kicked off her gumboots. “As her mum, I’m extremely proud of my daughter, that she remembered all that. A lot of adults wouldn’t have known what to do, but she did.”
Emily Branje.
Photo: Supplied / NZ Police
Emily Branje was swept out to sea on 26 September, 2019 while watching her step-grandfather whitebaiting on the Hokitika River mouth on the West Coast.
Her body was found on 28 September in the sea at Cobden Tiphead near Greymouth.
At the time of the accident, Emily had been staying with her stepfather s parents on the West Coast.
The coroner s findings say her step-grandfather, Raymond Baxter, went whitebaiting regularly at the mouth of the Hokitika River, and Emily wanted to go with him.
Baxter told police that Emily had wanted to come whitebaiting with him all week, but the weather had not been suitable. On 26 September he decided that Emily could join him for the first time.
Murray Walker, much-loved idiosyncratic voice of Formula 1– obituary msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Murray Walker
Credit: Gray Mortimore/ Getty Images
Murray Walker, who has died aged 97, was for more than half a century the high-octane voice of British motor sport and a consummate exponent of – and, indeed, with a strong claim to have invented – the “pants-on-fire” school of broadcast commentary.
At full throttle at the television microphone for a Formula 1 grand prix, Walker would typically let rip with what he called his “crash, bang, wallop” approach, developed during years of commentating on low-budget motocross and rallycross competitions.
“I reacted excitedly and enthusiastically to their drama, speed and aggression,” he remembered, “and when I moved full time to the more sophisticated tarmac racing I took my whoops, expletives, shouts of amazement and malapropisms with me.”
The BBC is in safe, if unexciting, hands with this defender of the status quo
14 January 2021 • 10:15pm
Richard Sharp, the former Goldman Sachs banker who will succeed Sir David Clementi as BBC chairman
Credit: House of Commons/PA
Richard Sharp s appearance in front of Thursday’s The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee (DCMS) was a job interview with a difference. For he was auditioning for a role he’d already got.
The pre-appointment hearing of the new BBC Chairman began with committee members flocking to declare their interests, “I am Spartacus” style.
“I declare that I was a BBC journalist for five years”, announced Chairman Julian Knight proudly.