Man killed by golfball shares some of blame

A man accidentally killed a fellow partygoer by hitting a golf ball off course, striking the man in the head.

Jaden Lawrence Goldfinch died in Dunedin Hospital on February 21, 2018, four days after the incident.

A coroner has ruled both Goldfinch and the other golfer were responsible for his death. The 27-year-old builder went for a game of golf at Frankton Golf Centre in Queenstown with a group of about 15 friends to celebrate one of their birthdays on February 17, 2018.

The group brought their own beers and carried them around the course in chilly bins. Before they teed off at the first hole the group discussed the need to be careful about where they hit the ball and where they stood.

The coroner said that by the time they got to the second hole, the group had already drunk ‘‘a few beers’’. To the right of the second fairway were some trees in front of a fence with netting over it. Behind the fence was a driving range.

Goldfinch’s tee shot went towards the trees, as did three of his companions’. One of the group, Caleb Wilson, said the four of them walked to the trees, taking care not to stray in front of the others progressing down the fairway for their second shots.

The group began looking for their balls. Goldfinch went ‘‘probably 10 to 15 metres’’ ahead, Wilson said, between the trees and the net. One of the other golfers in the group, Ashley King, teed off on the second hole then moved up the fairway.

King then saw a yellow golf ball from the driving range on the fairway. He approached it, planning to hit it back towards the range.

‘‘I made sure that the other three mates had my attention, so they were looking at me when I went to hit the ball over them,’’ King said. Wilson said he and two others had ‘‘crept forward a bit’’, and saw King take his swing.

‘‘When he hit the ball, I thought it could go anywhere, so I instinctively covered my head with my arms and turned away.’’

Despite aiming over the group, King’s ball went left and curved towards a tree just as Goldfinch walked out from behind the tree. King saw the ball hit Goldfinch on the side of his head, before he dropped to the ground. The group ran to Goldfinch. He sat up and was talking, and bleeding from a cut on the left side of his head.

One of the group put some ice from their chilly bins on Goldfinch’s hat and pressed it to the left side of his head. Goldfinch kept asking what happened and was unable to remember what he was told.

He was then driven to Lakes District Hospital. By then, he was ‘‘screaming and clutching his head’’, the report said.

He began having a seizure within five minutes of arriving at hospital. A doctor believed he had suffered a severe traumatic brain injury. Despite ‘‘maximal active treatment’’ over the following four days, Goldfinch died on February 21.

Police found no criminal liability for Goldfinch’s death.

Neither police nor the coroner knew the group were drinking alcohol until after his death. Police were not informed of the incident until after Goldfinch died.

‘‘It is therefore impossible to know the concentration of alcohol in Ashley’s system at the time he made the decision to hit the golf ball that hit Jaden,’’ the coroner ruled. The coroner said it was not her role to determine whether King was negligent when he hit the golf ball. ‘‘It is clear from the evidence that Ashley actually intended to hit the ball back to the driving range over [the three men]. He therefore intended to aim the ball in their direction even though he did not intend to hit them with it. But it is entirely foreseeable that the ball could have hit one of them.

‘‘It was only because of the way in which Ashley sliced the ball that it did not follow the trajectory he planned.

‘‘It is also entirely foreseeable that balls do not always travel straight ahead as planned; an unintended slice (as happened) can send a ball in an entirely different direction.’’

The coroner ruled King was ‘‘partly responsible’’ for Goldfinch’s death, by his deliberate action in hitting the ball with ‘‘no regard for whether it might not go where he intended’’.

Goldfinch was taking a risk by being at the side of the fairway forward of other players on it, the coroner found.

‘‘By going behind a tree, so that he could not see what was happening on the fairway, and then suddenly coming out from behind that tree, his risk of being hit by any stray ball increased.’’

She found Goldfinch was ‘‘partly instrumental’’ in his own death, although his contribution was ‘‘nowhere near as significant’’ as King’s.

Coroner Sue Johnson said she was unable to make comments or recommendations about the risks of consuming alcohol while playing golf.

As neither man had their blood-alcohol level tested, she had no evidence that it was a factor in the death.

‘‘Balls do not always travel straight ahead as planned.’’ Coroner Sue Johnson