‘I can feel him around me’

• Published date: 04 May 2024
• Publication title: Daily Post, The (Rotorua, New Zealand)

Her two boys smile back at her. The photo is bittersweet, for while she’d captured a rare impromptu shot of her sons, she recalls immediately being overcome with an awful sensation that it would become someone’s funeral photo

Tragically, that feeling was accurate.

Just weeks later, her beloved baby, 15-year-old Karnin Ahorangi Petera, would never come home from the Whangārei school where his dad Andre Petera dropped him that morning.

Karnin was one of 15 Whangārei Boys’ High School (WBHS) students visiting Abbey Caves on an Outdoor Education trip that torrential day.

As the caves flooded, all but one student made it out.

The news of the missing teenage boy gripped the nation as everyone waited.

More than 10 hours later, at 9pm, he was found by search and rescue but it was too late.

The family are limited in what they can say as WorkSafe is still investigating.

Police, however, have wrapped up their investigation and have said they are not laying charges.

But as the one-year anniversary of that dreadful day approaches, Karnin’s family would instead like to commemorate their boy’s jam-packed life.

“Tino lived life to the fullest,” says Alicia, referring to the nickname everyone knew Karnin by. “He was just non-stop, he didn’t like to sit still.”

Karnin loved his te reo, basketball, going to the gym, playing pool, board games, hanging out with friends. He also loved anything water-related; surfing, body boarding, diving, manus off the wharf or at Hikurangi lake.

Described as not having a bad word to say about anyone, Karnin’s euphemistic catch-phrase was “Kore te tahi”, meaning “not the one”.

Though, he did like to laugh at his mother’s attempts at te reo.

Whangārei-born Karnin attended Hora Hora Primary, Whangārei Intermediate School Te whānau o Waimirirangi (Māori immersion), then WBHS.

By the time he reached high school, he was fluent in te reo.

“He was a very confident speaker,” says his mum.

“He could stand up and mihi (formally greet) anywhere and he did. The only day I saw him get nervous was the first day at Boys’ High.

“Tino and (his friend) Liam were the first to ever mihi back (at the annual pōwhiri). They volunteered because that’s how strong their te reo was.”

He wasn’t a fan of school’s academic side.

“He didn’t see the point in a lot of it but he loved his Māori, PE and Outdoor Ed and he’d go there to see his friends and play basketball,” Alicia says.

“If we picked him up from town, he’d make us go the long way home past the Christian school...