Nor did he explain why the drilling has taken almost two years or why a further six months are needed to review the evidence and finish the investigation. Sweeney did not explain why police had only begun the borehole drilling operation after the mine had been sealed, preventing any possibility of a forensic examination of vital evidence.

Sweeney declared that police work at the mine site would be finished by the end of May, but “we’ll continue with the investigation for the rest of this year.” Asked whether he expected to make any arrests, Sweeney said he could not say. The police investigation is now being dragged out beyond this year’s October 14 election. Nearly six years later, however, no charges have been laid. The Labour Party formed a coalition government in late 2017 promising to re-enter the mine and gather forensic evidence to prosecute those responsible for turning it into a death trap. It had no adequate emergency exit, grossly ineffective ventilation and methane gas monitoring, and other faulty equipment, but the operation had been allowed to continue by the state’s regulators and by the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU, now called E tū). The mine was a gas bomb waiting to go off. Successive governments have ensured that no one has been held accountable for the disaster, despite a 2012 royal commission of inquiry finding that Pike River Coal’s board and senior management had prioritised production and profit over workers’ health and safety. The families were backed by thousands of ordinary people and by international mining experts, who published a plan demonstrating how the mine workings could be safely entered to conduct a forensic investigation. The government rejected a petition by the majority of the victims’ families against the sealing of the mine. The mine was permanently sealed, preventing investigators from accessing the areas where the 29 bodies are located along with the main underground fan, which may have sparked the first explosion. Police have taken several images with cameras lowered down boreholes drilled into the mine since late 2021, when the Labour Party-led government decided not to allow a manned re-entry of the mine workings.

“Pathologists are rightly conservative because they can’t get into the mine to access that particular area,” he said. ĭetective Superintendent Darryl Sweeney said pathologists could not say “definitively” that the images show bodies, but there was “clothing and equipment” that indicated miners were there.

Mine till