With every step Jeremy Capper makes he pretends he is kicking a football.
The sole survivor of a crash which killed three of his motorbike riding friends, he is learning to stand “on my own two feet” with his new prosthetic leg.
The 48-year-old lost a leg and an arm in the triple fatal crash in the central North Island last December.
Capper is now waiting for a new prosthetic arm, a knee and a foot.
“Standing on my own two feet felt quite emotional to be honest,” he told the Herald.
“I need to discipline myself to stop thinking of how I used to walk and adapt to the different functions of the prosthetic.
“I need to remind myself to pretend I’m kicking a soccer ball even though I can’t feel anything.”
As he gets used to his new life, he said there are still times he wants to cross his arms.
That’s now not possible, but he said it was important to keep “the muscles and tendons working” in the areas near where his lost limbs used to be.
Capper, a fitter and welder, is trying to piece his life back together after being involved in the tragic triple-fatal motorbike crash in Utiku nearTaihape.
The president of the Sulphur City Motorcycle Club and three of his mates, Lesley Brooks, 46, Luke Shaw and Jacob “Pudding” Coady, both 24, had attended a bike rally in Mangaweka for the Manawatū chapter of the Road Pirates on December 6 last year.
The following day they had just finished breakfast and were heading along SH1 in Utiku near Taihape around 8am when tragedy struck.
Capper was riding with three motorcyclists close behind him when he saw an oncoming black ute.
“It happened so quickly ... I collected the left side of his vehicle, and he collected mine,” Capper said.
He remembers bouncing off the ute, skidding 100m and then briefly blacking out.
“I remember everything: the noise, the sparks, sliding on gravel and seeing the car on its side,” he said.
“There was debris everywhere. I asked a witness, ‘Am I bleeding? Am I missing anything?’. He said, ‘Your foot.’
“It was 100m away. I thought, that’s a bummer.
“I slid on my belly and crushed my arm, my hand was mangled, and I smashed my elbow. My last words were ‘Please don’t let me bleed out’.”
Critically injured, Capper was flown to Wellington Hospital and then on to Hamilton, where he was in an induced coma for nearly six weeks.
He says he is lucky to be alive but devastated he lost an arm, a leg and his three friends.
Garth Temokina Thompson, 51, faces charges of being under the influence of methamphetamine and causing a fatal crash killing three people and seriously injuring another.
He was also charged with driving under the influence of a drug “to such an extent as to be incapable” of operating a motor vehicle on December 7.
Sentences for the latter charge range between six months and two years.
Capper told the Herald he would like to see harsher penalties for breaking drug driving laws.
That includes for drivers under the influence of drugs involved in fatal crashes to face manslaughter charges.
Capper, who lives in Galatea, receives 24/7 care from his wife, Tania.
Every week he has physio and is slowly trying to walk again.
He is coming to terms with not having an arm or a leg and says the prosthetic attached to his buttocks feels heavy and cumbersome.
He says he has bad moments and gets frustrated wheeling to the makeshift bathroom outside their home.
“I need to have a bath around 3 o’clock in the afternoon before it gets too cold,” he said.
“We are finalising things on our house before we can apply to ACC for funding, so the house is more access-friendly.”
Thompson is due to reappear in the Whanganui District Court on 8 July.
He said when asked by Crown prosecutor for what sentence he would like to see be imposed on Thompson, he replied: “maybe [he] could live like me for the rest of my life”.
“I am battling with life and I can’t even hug my wife anymore.”
Carolyne Meng-Yee is an Auckland-based investigative journalist who won Best Documentary at the Voyager Media Awards in 2022. She recently runner-up for Best Editorial Campaign and was part of a team that won Best Coverage of a Major News Event: Philip Polkinghorne Murder Trial. She worked for the Herald on Sunday from 2007-2011 and rejoined the Herald in 2016 after working as an award-winning current affairs producer at TVNZ’s 60 Minutes, 20/20 and Sunday.