One dead after crash on busy central Taupō street

Sunday, 31 May 2026

One person has died in a two-vehicle crash on a busy central Taupō street, leaving eyewitnesses shocked.

Emergency services were called to a crash on Te Heuheu Rd just before 6.30pm on Friday.

One person died at the scene while two others were critically hurt, police said.

A witness who was first on the scene told Stuff she was waiting in a line of cars to enter the roundabout when she saw a silver car collide with a small grey SUV.

A blue vehicle was also hit during the impact and the SUV was forced across the roundabout, she said, with engine parts flung 15 meters down the street by the force of the crash.

The witness and her husband ran to the SUV, which was closest, and her husband and others began trying to smash the rear window with bricks shaken loose by the crash.

The windows were fogged up, making it impossible to see who was inside, she said.

Once they broke through, they saw it was an older woman in the driver’s seat.

“I kept saying ‘stay awake, we're here’”, the witness told Stuff.

“At that time it was chaos, people trying to pry open the door and smash more windows,” she said. The driver was responsive but in pain.

The witness said emergency services were on the scene within minutes, and she “knew something bad had happened” when she saw some of the activity around the silver vehicle.

Eyewitness Brad Boyce told Stuff he saw a tree on the roundabout shake when a vehicle hit it.

He called 111 while others tried to gain entry into the vehicle on the roundabout, in which there was a male driver and female passenger.

The driver was unresponsive and the passenger was responsive and in pain, Boyce said, and he later saw the female passenger being removed on a stretcher.

He told Stuff he was left shocked by the contrast between diners continuing to eat in the busy restaurant area and the destruction on the street outside.

“I struggled to find words. I cried,” he said.

A tarpaulin had been placed over the car on the roundabout when he left the scene.

Two patients in a critical condition were airlifted to Waikato Hospital and Rotorua Hospital.

Two others in a moderate condition were treated at the scene.