When Tuai Senior Constable Tony Maultsaid got a knock on his front door at 8.30pm earlier this month he wasn’t expecting to spend the next five hours in the middle of a rescue drama.

Tony was on days off and wasn’t on call as his vehicle was in for repairs, but at the door was the sister of a local woman who had failed to show up from her drive home from work several hours before.

Tony didn’t hesitate – his community needed his help.

He sent the woman home in case her sister arrived there then made a few phone calls. When he had no success locating the missing woman he decided to drive the route she had taken.

It was dark so Tony took it slowly, searching for any trace of the woman.

Twenty minutes out of Wairoa he noticed a very faint tyre mark, which he nearly drove past.

“I thought, no, I better just check that out. I walked to the edge and could hear someone yelling for help. I called out saying I was here, and her response was, ‘It’s about time!’."

Tony called FENZ and the ambulance then made his way down the 35-metre bank to the woman, who was trapped with serious injuries.

“Her leg was trapped under the vehicle, so her leg was injured, and she also had a badly injured shoulder, broken ribs and had taken a big knock to the head.”

Tony stayed with her until emergency services arrived, which took some time as they had to come from Gisborne, then assisted with the rescue.

He says getting her back up to the road wasn’t easy, with the team needing to winch her up a vertical bank on the stretcher.

It’s possible the woman had been trapped down the bank in her vehicle for up to five hours with some very serious injuries.

Eastern District Deployment Coordinator Senior Sergeant Steve Nicoll says without Tony going above and beyond the woman could have been trapped down the bank overnight.

“With temperatures dropping and the potential for shock to set in, this job could have had a very different outcome,” says Steve.

For Tony, it’s what he does for his community but he admits he was pretty happy to finally jump into bed around 1.30am, knowing the woman was on her way to hospital.

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