Source: Radio New Zealand
Supplied
A Sanson cafe owner says a memorial to the children of the Field family is a chance to let mother Chelsey Field know “her little one’s lives mattered”.
August, Hugo and Goldie Field died late last year, in what is being treated as a murder-suicide. Their father, Dean Field also died.
Emergency services were called to a fire at the family’s home on 15 November.
Supplied
On Tuesday, Chelsey Field unveiled a plaque installed in front of a colourful picket fence which encircled a fairy garden in the playground at Viv’s Kitchen on the main road of the small Manawatū town.
Vivienne Anne Withers owns the cafe alongside her husband Kevan.
As she constructed the fairy garden on the cafe grounds, she said she decided she had to dedicate it to the children.
“I take things to heart and when this happened I was just starting this little fairy garden,” Withers said.
Supplied
“I went out there to do a bit on it and it just came to me that ‘I’ve got to make this for the kids. They’ve got to be remembered.”
She said she approached a local trophy engraver who was able to include images of the children on the plaque.
The fence was painted in the same bright colours chosen by the family for the children’s caskets.
The plaque also included the name of Iris – Field’s stillborn daughter whose ashes were lost in the fire that consumed the family home during the incident – as well as the family dog Marlo who also died.
Withers said the children’s deaths had shaken not just the tight-knit community but the nation.
Supplied
“It’s like it touched the whole of the country. The whole country wrapped their arms around Chelsey. [This kind of thing] just doesn’t happen in New Zealand let alone in little Sanson. It’s just shocking,” Withers said.
Field has been approached for comment.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand