SIMON O CONNOR/STUFF
Kerry Roach put a ladder up to the top balcony and got Ben D Ath and Leticia Nixon out of their New Plymouth home after a gas explosion.
A lit candle sparked a gas explosion that has left a 26-year-old New Plymouth man in an induced coma. But he wasn’t the only victim. Jane Matthews reports. I just heard him scream,” Leticia Nixon, says. “The whole room just went up in flames.” Nixon and her partner, Ben D’Ath, were settling in for the night at their Devon St West flat, while their downstairs neighbour, Kerry Roach, was relaxing on his couch with his French bulldog, Bella.