[barend]

Driver ploughs into 13 teens
February 21, 2006

SIX teenagers were killed and several others injured in what has been called Australia's worst pedestrian hit-and-run accident when a driver ploughed into them.

The driver allegedly fled the scene of the accident so quickly that he left his two uninjured children, aged 4 and 10, in the wreck of his car, reported the Australian media.

The accident occured at about 9.50pm on Saturday night as a group of 13 teenagers were leaving a birthday party and trying to hail taxis by the side of the road in the north-western Victoria town of Cardross.


Police said that a speeding green Ford station wagon suddenly veered and ploughed into the group, instantly killing siblings Shane and Abby Hirst, 16 and 17, Stevie-Lee Weight, 15, Corey Dowling, 16, and Cassandra Manners, 16.

A sixth teenager, Josie Calvi, 16, was air-lifted to Royal Adelaide Hospital with head injuries, but died last night.

The remaining seven in the group were also badly injured.

Witness Dominic Natale, 17, was just 100m away when the accident happened. He told the Herald Sun: 'We heard this car screeching around all over the road and then just heard a bang, and then all this screaming. We saw five bodies scattered on the ground and the car on the side all smashed up.'

Mr Justin Poulton, 19, who was also at the scene, said that the victims were knocked off their feet and spread over 150 metres along the roadside as people rushed to their aid.

'Everyone was hysterical. People were running everywhere,' he told the Australian Associated Press.

The police said witnesses saw the driver, 34-year-old Thomas Towle, fleeing his car and running into a nearby vineyard, leaving his children behind.

Towle has been arrested and charged in court.

the electric newspaper

now i've seen some pretty unbeleivable behaviour in my time....

but running on foot from an accident as bad as that leaving your two children (a four year old boy, and ten year old girl) in the back seat is just plain shocking AND stupid...

i know the guy probably 'panicked' but the car is registered to him, there were two witnesses in the back who knew where he lived... i'll bet they're proud of him...

i'll be quite frightened if social services don't take his kids away...
because good with children he definatley is NOT!!!

this is history ladies and gentlemen... on that day a new breed of scum was borne.

This post has been edited by barend: 20 February 2006 - 08:27 PM

[Deepsycher]

Just curious on how he picked up the attitude of running away from accidents, and unable to drive there safely in the first place. Is car insurance cheap or expensive over there?

This post has been edited by Deepsycher: 20 February 2006 - 08:55 PM

[barend]

expensive... but that's alright... i don't think he had any.

[SimeSublime]

Well, he'll likely be spending quite a bit of time in jail now. If his blood alcohol was over .05, then they're charge him with murder rather then manslaughter, I think.

Possibly inappropriate, but lucky he left the car behind, because there may not have been any cheerleaders around to sing the numberplate.

[barend]

he goes to court in june,
he's looking at 6 counts of 'negligent driving occasioning death and fleeing the sceen without offering assistance' which is said to be 20 years each.

so a 120year sentance is looking likley....

nice.

[Gobbler]

120 years, eh? Well, hooray for anti-aging products it is then.

[Deepsycher]

So it does not take insurance for someone who wanted to have the "ride of their life."
Don't they have electric chairs?

[SimeSublime]

Australia doesn't believe in capital punishement.

[Deepsycher]

Those who were killed as well as injured had been physically "punished" out of a life by the driver; in this case he gets a chance to live which they never had. But exceptional to accidents that was no ones fault.

How much does it cost to keep a prisoner in jail a day over there?

This post has been edited by Deepsycher: 21 February 2006 - 08:31 AM

[Gobbler]

Hmm... I know that you're not capable of joking, Dee, so I guess... I'll just have to be disgusted of that attitude of yours.

[Deepsycher]

Hmm... I know that you're not capable of joking, Dee, so I guess... I'll just have to be disgusted of that attitude of yours.

First of all I was not joking here in this thread to begin with: You are assuming that I am incapable of joking, when you yourself do not even know me fully to even say that. In the similar way of, “Oh, he cannot do this therefore he is incapable of doing that” on what is appearing to be, without asking based on ignorance. I am learning to make jokes; unless you yourself were told that you are “incapable”, using it on other people.

Secondly this has nothing to do with this subject as again. Either discuss it in the complaining thread or if you don't like it, go and create another thread for, “Oppression, for personal differences and conflicting interests.”

No more on that and getting back to the subject, I believe not in the image of "physical punishment" but how about in reason to the saying in these circumstances “an eye for an eye" as to a life for a life?

This post has been edited by Deepsycher: 21 February 2006 - 09:30 AM

[Gobbler]

That would be physical punishment in this case.

[Deepsycher]

I mean for those who kill others as intended, to be killed in the same way but not physical punishment as to deliberately hurting unnecessarily.

[Gobbler]

Oh... alright then, that's... that's... that's still bloody physical punishment, darn it. And who do you think should ram a blunt fork through the head of the notorious blunt-fork-killer in order to kill him the same way he killed others? You? Or maybe someone whose not as bloodthirsty and more innocent?

[Deepsycher]

No I was talking about those who killed with intent. In the similar style of, "What you give is what you get."

This post has been edited by Deepsycher: 21 February 2006 - 09:55 AM