A teenage boy has died after being hit by a vehicle in Omaha, in Rodney, on Saturday morning.
Emergency services were called to Omaha Drive around 4am, a police spokesperson told 1News.
The boy died at the scene.
The driver of the vehicle is speaking with police and assisting with their inquires.
Police are urging caution after two more deaths overnight to January 1. (Source: 1News)
The Serious Crash Unit is investigating to establish the circumstances behind the incident.
The driver and the teenager are known to each other.
Seventeen-year-old holidaymaker Cecilia Jenkins had been in the area for New Year celebrations and told 1News it was tragic news to wake to.
"It's just devastating really ... you never want to wake up to the new year’s hearing that type of thing."
She said there were hundreds of teenagers out and about overnight.
"Heaps of kids needing to walk home still, just on the side of the road. And, yeah, still heaps of cars going around, so it was pretty busy."
It takes the current road toll to 10, compared to 11 for the entire period last year.
The official Christmas and New Year’s holiday period ends at 6am on January 5, 2022. It began at 4pm on December 24, 2021.
Deputy Police commissioner Glen Dunbier said officers would be working hard over summer to help prevent any more deaths.
"We'll be out there doing our part to keep the roads safe over these next few days as New Zealanders move around ... getting themselves home.
"We'll be asking our drivers to take breaks, be patient getting where they're going, it's going to take longer, clearly don't drink and drive and don't get distracted."
AA Spokesman Simon Douglas said there was still a lot more work to do to get the annual road toll down.
"We need safer roads, we need safer cars, we need safer drivers and more police enforcement," he said.
More than 300 were killed on the roads last year, despite Covid-19 limiting travel at times.
The number is only slightly down on the worst years in 2017 and 2018.
"We've set an ambitious target of a 40 per cent reduction by 2030 ... this year we've had a result the same as last year ... so I think we would all agree we need to do better," he said.
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