Ashley Wickman search: Police checked Eagle before $8200-an-hour rescue helicopter

Her death is now subject to an inquest which, initially, Coroner Tania Tetitaha indicated she would do “on the papers” without an open hearing.

But Ashley’s parents, Gary and Danielle Wickman, told Tetitaha at a preliminary hearing on July 23 that there were failings and lost opportunities in the search and they wanted those involved to appear in court and justify the decisions made.

Gary Wickman told the hearing it was unknown how long Ashley was “fighting for her life in the ocean” but evidence had been gathered showing what they believed were wasted minutes from the time one of Ashley’s friends made a 111 call for help at 12.02am.

Tetitaha has now sought expert advice on how long Ashley could have survived in the water, saying her jurisdiction to inquire into the search for their daughter was governed by the time in which their daughter was alive.

A Herald investigation has found a helicopter could have been over Uretiti Beach by 12.30am if the nearest available aircraft had been alerted immediately after the 111 call.

Instead, the Nest helicopter wasn’t there until almost 80 minutes after the 111 call, with at least one delay introduced because the police sought to use the Eagle helicopter, which is based in Auckland.

In an earlier statement, Northland district commander Matt Srhoj said: “There are costs associated with any rescue operation, and the reality is that these will sit with various agencies depending on the circumstances.

“In general, the cost to deploy Eagle sits within regular operating expenses, so is our preferred option when available and most suitable for the task at hand.”

In response to questions as to whether that was police policy in cases of life or death, Srhoj said “police look to deploy the best asset for the job at hand”.

“Eagle is our preferred asset and usually considered first as it is often flying and can reach locations quicker than other assets. On this occasion, Eagle was unavailable to deploy due to the weather.”

Evidence gathered by the Herald showed on-call search controller Detective Sergeant Ryan Cooper was contacted at 12.04am – two minutes after the 111 call – and told an 18-year-old woman had gone swimming near the mouth of the Waipu River and not returned.

Police documents and other information show Cooper spent the first 20 minutes contacting Coastguard to send a boat and local police officers.

A helicopter was not called for until 12.28am when Cooper contacted Inspector Maria Nordstrom, the on-duty senior officer, and asked for approval to use the Nest helicopter based in Whangārei.

Records show that Nordstrom told Cooper to check whether Eagle was available.

At 12.37am, Cooper called Nordstrom back to say Eagle was unavailable and the Nest helicopter was approved.

At 12.43am, the Nest helicopter was formally assigned, taking off about 1.10am and arriving at Uretiti Beach nine minutes later.

New information obtained by the Herald shows there would have been no financial penalty for alerting Nest earlier while police checked whether Eagle was available.

Health New Zealand ambulance group manager David Richards said the charge for third-party users such as police and the Rescue Coordination Centre was $8200 an hour in 2024.

But the charge applied only once the helicopter flew. “There is no standby fee if the crew is called but a mission isn’t launched,” Richards said.

Northern Rescue, which operates Nest, separately confirmed it did not charge anything for preparing a helicopter before takeoff.

A Northern Rescue spokeswoman said early tasking followed by cancellation was a normal part of responding to time-critical emergencies.

“In a time-critical person-in-water event, Northern Rescue may be tasked at an early stage and subsequently stood down if another aircraft or resource is assessed as being better placed to respond or becomes available.”

It said early tasking allowed the crew to begin preparing “while the wider operational picture is being assessed and other resources are being co-ordinated”.

That is also how former Eagle and rescue helicopter pilot Armin Egly says he believes a water emergency should be handled.

Egly, who spent 15 years flying Eagle and later worked as a senior flight examiner and training manager for Auckland Rescue Helicopter, said standing practice during his career was to alert likely rescue assets immediately.

“You either get tasked or stood down. And that was probably the biggest mistake in Ashley’s case,” Egly believed.

“The main failing was not to notify all the agencies.”

Asked if the medical “golden hour” applied to rescues, he said: “The golden hour doesn’t apply at all in the water. It should be a golden minute.”

Egly said in favourable circumstances the Nest helicopter could take about 20 minutes to prepare for a maritime job and another eight minutes to reach Uretiti. On that calculation, an alert immediately after midnight could potentially have put the helicopter over the beach around 12.30am.

Northern Rescue said the actual 27-minute mobilisation that night was within the normal range for a complex night maritime search.

Egly also questioned why Eagle was considered ahead of Nest for a person missing in the sea.

Eagle carried forward-looking infrared equipment, known as FLIR, which detected heat signatures.

But Egly said its narrow field of view and the loss of body heat in cold water could make finding a person at sea difficult. “It shouldn’t have been considered the best tool.”

The Nest helicopter did not have FLIR but its four crew were equipped with helmet-mounted night-vision goggles and high-powered searchlights.

Also, the Nest helicopter carried a rescue winch but Eagle did not. Egly said that meant Eagle might have been able to find Ashley but could not itself lift her from the water.

He hesitated before describing the consequence in blunt terms: if Eagle had found Ashley beyond the reach of other rescuers, “all they’re going to do is watch her drown”.

“I hate to say it like that.”

NZ Police has itself since acknowledged the difference, saying the Nest helicopter was better suited to the operation because it had a winch.

But records show Cooper’s request for the Nest helicopter was put on hold while Eagle was checked.

Cooper’s account says the District Command Centre was asked to establish whether Eagle was available. He was then told Eagle was “not available” and returned to Nordstrom, who approved Nest at 12.37am.

But a separate police communications record shows the command centre subsequently contacting the central communications centre with a different instruction: “Standdown on that request for Eagle”, adding that the duty commissioned officer had authorised the Nest helicopter.

The Herald has put the contradiction to police but been told that it will not respond to further questions about the search because it is subject to a coroner’s inquiry.

There is also a lack of clarity over the apparent reason for Eagle’s unavailability. Police resisted telling the Wickmans why it was not available for a year, and then refused to tell the Herald until intervention by the Office of the Ombudsman.

Police has now said Eagle was unavailable because of “the weather in Auckland at the time”. Weather records for November 30, 2024, show that at Auckland Airport about 12.30am there were cloudy conditions and light winds.

Egly said that during his years flying Eagle, the aircraft was able in appropriate conditions to head out over the water and fly north below 1000 feet along the coast to avoid weather, although permission from a senior officer was required for Eagle to operate outside Auckland.

The helicopter response was not the only part of the opening response the Wickmans want examined by the coroner.

By the time Cooper asked for the Nest helicopter at 12.28am, 24 minutes had already passed since he was alerted to a young woman missing in the sea.

Cooper had contacted Coastguard shortly after being alerted, saying later he knew there would be a significant delay before a vessel could reach the scene. He also sought local officers to go to the beach and establish exactly where Ashley had last been seen.

The two officers initially went to the wrong side of the mouth of the Waipu River before finding Ashley’s friends north of the river.

A search-and-rescue review later identified serious communications problems during the overnight operation.

The frontline officers at Uretiti had no access to the National Liaison Channel being used by specialist rescue agencies. The review said search controllers handling evening callouts such as this would usually take the call from home without access to radios or the Liaison Channel.

Surf Life Saving told the review the lack of a common channel caused confusion and made it difficult to pass information between agencies. A contemporaneous Coastguard log shows Surf was still trying to work out how to contact the helicopter or police after 1.28am.

Northern Rescue also raised concerns about police not using the Liaison Channel, with records showing that about 40 minutes into the aerial search police were still asking what radio channel should be used to communicate with the helicopter.

The review said the lack of access could cause delays, particularly in the early stages of a search.

At 1.19am Nest arrived and began searching. It was not until about 1.35am – roughly 15 minutes into the aerial search – that Cooper asked the Rescue Coordination Centre for a search area model where Ashley might have drifted.

The Wickmans also want the coroner to examine what happened as the overnight search began winding down.

At about 1.50am, less than two hours after the 111 call, Cooper was discussing with the helicopter dispatcher how much longer the Nest helicopter would search.

“There’s no point going all night,” he said.

At the coroner’s hearing, Gary Wickman asked: “How did they know there was no point in searching? We would like a coronial inquest into it because we would like them to sit there and answer these questions.”

The couple told the Herald they would have remortgaged their house to pay for the helicopter if cost was an issue.

The Nest helicopter was heading back to Whangārei by about 2.20am, although Northern Rescue has since told the Herald it had reached the fuel endurance available and could not have continued without returning.

Surf Life Saving and Coastguard continued searching for a period after the helicopter left, but by around 3am the major overnight response was winding down.

Gary and Danielle Wickman had arrived at the beach about 2.10am and were left there alone, told the search would resume at dawn. They were not contacted until around 8am and told a fresh effort was about to get underway. Ashley’s body was found around noon at sea, about six kilometres from her last known position.

Private investigator Mike Sabin, who has helped seek answers for the Wickmans, said he became involved because he believed police and the Independent Police Conduct Authority had “failed to answer valid questions” they had over “obvious deficiencies in the search”.

“It seems apparent that time was lost while the two senior police involved were making decisions centred around the cost of deploying a helicopter. The delays caused by that process could well have been the difference between life and death for Ashley Wickman.”

Sabin, a former police detective, said he hoped the coroner held a formal open inquest to provide the Wickmans with answers “that could well prevent others from suffering the same fate”.

Among other issues the Wickmans want the coroner to examine is what assessment was made of Ashley’s likely survivability before the search was scaled back and whether there were clear criteria for doing so.

Before deciding on an open hearing, the coroner has called for reports on her estimated time of death, on sea conditions on the night and for the pathologist to consider if a 15mm abrasion found on Ashley’s forehead could have happened before her death while in the water and led to a loss of consciousness.

David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He joined the Herald in 2004.

Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.