A father-of-three and well-respected stock agent has died after falling and hitting his head while curling at a local ice rink.
Victor Schikker, 67, died in hospital yesterday after the fall at Staveley Ice & Curling Rink in Mid Canterbury on Friday.
His family say it was a tragic accident during an event that Schikker, who has worked with PGG Wrightson for 49 years, had organised himself.
Schikker was airlifted in critical condition after falling backwards and hitting his head on the ice, it’s understood.
A Hato Hone St John spokesperson said they responded to the ice-skating rink shortly before 4pm with one ambulance and a helicopter.
Police said the death would be referred to the coroner.
Staveley Ice skating rink in Mid Canterbury.
A spokesman for the Staveley Hall Society, which manages the ice rink, declined to comment out of respect for the person’s family. He said the incident had occurred during a private curling function.
It is the second death at an ice-skating rink in Canterbury in two weeks.
The death comes less than two weeks after 13-year-old Kymani Hiley-Hetaraka died after suffering a catastrophic fall while ice skating on a school trip.
Kymani was transported to Christchurch Hospital in a critical condition on the morning of July 30 after the incident at the city’s Alpine Ice Sports Centre.
Her family said that she had suffered an unsurvivable head injury.
Two days after the incident, a family member announced Kymani had passed away in hospital.
Curtis Gwatkin and Maraea Hetaraka, Kymani’s parents, say their “baby” should not have had to die for something to change and that she should have been wearing a helmet.
In July, former Olympic speed skater Andrew Nicholson said he was lucky to be alive after falling through a frozen dam in Central Otago.
Nicholson, who earned a fourth place in a skating event at the 1992 Winter Olympics, was skating at Lower Manorburn Dam when he moved 3m from the thick ice markers and fell through the ice.
“I went in instantly, over my head in water and cries unheard,” Nicholson said in a post on social media.
Nicholson told the Herald he realised he’d made a “big mistake”.
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