The guilty pleas were entered by the school board’s lawyer in Whangārei District Court.
Photo: RNZ / Peter de Graaf

The board of a Northland high school has pleaded guilty to two charges of exposing people to risk of serious injury or death following a caving trip that ended in tragedy last year.

Karnin Petera, who was 15, died after he was swept away by floodwaters during a Whangārei Boys’ High School trip to Abbey Caves on 9 May 2023.

During a brief hearing in the Whangārei District Court on Monday afternoon, the school board’s lawyer Marie Wisker entered guilty pleas to both charges laid by WorkSafe.

Judge Gene Tomlinson set a sentencing date of 27 September and directed the entire day be set aside, starting at 10am.

He also ordered restorative justice be offered to all victims named in the court documents, including the 14 other boys on the trip and two workers.

The two workers were granted interim name suppression.

Judge Tomlinson started the hearing with a minute’s silence, which he said was “in light of Karnin’s passing and the solemnity of the matters here today”.

The hearing was attended by 10 members of Karnin’s whānau, including his parents Alicia Toki and Andre Petera.

They did not wish to comment after the hearing.

Lawyers for WorkSafe and the school board appeared via audio-visual link.

The charges, as laid under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, are:

• Being a PCBU (Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking), having a duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the health and safety of other persons is not put at risk from work carried out as part of the conduct of the business or undertaking, namely the outdoor education caving activity to Abbey Caves Reserve, did fail to comply with that duty, and that failure exposed other persons, including Karnin Petera, to a risk of death or serious injury.
• Being a PCBU, having a duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers who work for the PCBU, while the workers were at work in the business or undertaking, namely undertaking an outdoor education caving activity to Abbey Caves Reserve, did fail to comply with that duty, and that failure exposed workers to a risk of death or serious injury.

The entrance to Abbey Caves, Whāngarei.
Photo: RNZ / Tom Taylor

As earlier reported by RNZ, 15 students and two adults entered the cave during the outdoor education trip.

All but one managed to get out or were rescued.

Karnin’s body was recovered about 9pm that evening by a search and rescue team working in extremely difficult conditions.

The caves, which are just 5km northwest of Whangārei’s city centre, have been closed to the public ever since.

A risk assessment carried out before the trip stated Abbey Caves were prone to flooding in heavy rain.

It recommended postponing the trip if water levels were too high.

The trip went ahead, despite Northland being subject to a MetService orange rain warning at the time.

WorkSafe’s two charges were filed against the legal entity of the school board, not individual board members.

Whangārei Boys’ High principal Karen Smith sent a letter to parents when the charges were first laid, writing: “Our thoughts remain with the whānau of Karnin Petera, his friends, our school whānau, the wider Whangārei community and everyone who has been touched by this tragedy.”

Smith said the school had worked closely with WorkSafe throughout the investigation, and had developed and implemented new outdoor education policies following the tragedy.