One of Canterbury’s highest-ranking police officers has described arriving at the scene of a horror crash involving young teenagers who used a stolen car.

Inspector Peter Cooper told Newstalk ZB’s Chris Lynch he was called out of bed to the Rakaia crash on Sunday morning to help officers secure the scene and support his colleagues.

 A 13-year-old girl remains in a serious condition and a 14-year-old-boy is in a critical condition in Christchurch hospital.

Inspector Cooper says when he first got the call that there were eight people in a small car, he expected the worst, and while the scene was “bad enough” he was surprised it wasn’t worse.

 As Canterbury Rural Area commander, Inspector Cooper is responsible for Rakaia to just short of Kaikoura, including Akaroa.

“Part of that role requires attending big jobs that can get complicated.”

 “When your staff are involved in something like this, it’s always nice to front up and make sure they’re alright –more for moral support than a commanding role.”

 Inspector Cooper has been in the force for 35 years and has seen a lot.

 “There aren’t many surprises left, but you know you’re going to something bad when you can see so many red and blue lights in front of you, fire appliances and ambulances and helicopters landing, you know it’s going to be pretty horrific.”

 Inspector Cooper says “being a father of two boys, it has always been my worst nightmare to turn up to a crash” (involving teenagers).

 He says his kids have grown up now, but his first reaction is feeling for the parents.

 “You personalise these things and think that could be anybody.”

 “Living and working in a community like New Zealand as a whole, we all know everybody, so you wonder – do I know these kids?”

 He says the hardest thing is having to tell a parent they’ve lost a child.

 That door knock – that’s the worst job ever and I’ve done a lot of those and I really feel for those folks.”

 Thankfully no one died in the early Sunday morning crash –  but it was touch and go.

 Inspector Cooper is immensely proud of his staff for the way they handled the situation and in particular, one officer, who used to be a paramedic.

 “He did some pretty sensational first aid, before ambulances arrived, intubating patients, placing tubes down throats and that stuff can go unnoticed”  – essentially keeping patients alive.

 A family friend of the 13-year-old girl wrote on social media that she snuck out of her parent’s house at night.

 Inspector Cooper says there are plenty of kids who sneak out at night.

 “Sneaking out is one thing but getting into a stolen car with potentially seven other kids, that’s probably a whole new level of poor decision making.”

 Inspector Cooper says there’s been a lot of interest in the fact that earlier police had been chasing the stolen vehicle.

 He’s listened to the recordings of police staff at the time.

 “The pursuit lasted 35 seconds. It was abandoned by staff, because of the vehicle being on the wrong side of the road travelling at speed.”

 “They’ve done everything right, and I’m pretty proud of their decision making.”

 After abandoning the short pursuit, staff started looking down side streets to find the vehicle and unfortunately, they later came across the crash.

 Some commentators have been quick to condemn police, suggesting they shouldn’t pursue teenagers who fail to stop.

 Inspector Cooper says “it would be wonderful to be able to have that kind of vision, it’s dark, it’s night time, the vehicle’s travelling at speed away from you.”

 “The staff had no idea how many people were inside that vehicle, had no idea how old they were, and had no idea what it was about to do when they first saw it, so their decision to stop that vehicle was the right decision in my view, and I back them up one hundred per cent.”

 “They’ve got to try and stop that high-risk vehicle right now in the natural course of what we would do.”

“The fact that it had chosen not to stop and had gone off at speed, then police’s next decision making is to consider is this justified, is this risk I’m creating higher than the risk in front of me? 

“The answer to those questions was yes the risk was too high and the officers did all of this in a very very short period of time, so I do take some annoyance out of the connection that we caused that crash in any shape or form by chasing that vehicle, because that is simply not true.”

 Inspector Cooper says police are still working through various interview processes because of the ages of the people in the car.

 He says police still need to establish, evidentially, who was sitting in the driver’s seat, because there was no one sitting in the seat when emergency services arrived.