Inside the Law. Vikki Petraitis

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      Chris Field immediately notified the police helicopter to begin a search of surrounding market gardens. He knew the driver could not have walked away from the twisted wreck uninjured. There was a possibility they’d suffered a head injury and had wandered off in a daze, so they had to be located as soon as possible. State Emergency Service officers, together with the police and sniffer dogs joined the search on the ground.

      A second possibility was that the driver had deliberately left the scene of the accident to avoid the consequences.

      Chris Field and his fellow officers began their investigation. The signs were easy for the trained crash investigators to read. Skid marks told them the direction in which all the vehicles had been travelling, the shape of dents told them the angle of impact and flakes of paint told them which vehicles had collided.

      They started with the red Holden, which was a wreck. The front end on the driver’s side was completely smashed in, as was the driver’s side door. The dead man lay back against the seat – his face covered in blood. His feet had been jammed under the pedals on impact. Field concluded the deceased man was definitely the vehicle’s driver.

      Field noted that the red Holden had come to rest on the nature strip at right angles to the white station wagon, which he knew had been driven by the other woman. Scuff marks in the grass indicated the direction in which the car was spinning prior to coming to rest.

      Field noted gold flecks of paint adhering to the red Holden at the point of first impact. The investigators checked the dash board in case the speedo had jammed on impact to give a clue as to how fast the Holden had been travelling but the needle sat on zero.

      The dead man’s seat belt hung slackly around his body. He’d been wearing it and on impact it had locked in position as he’d been thrown forward. But no seat belt could have saved him.

      A cursory check of the inside of the red Holden revealed nothing to suggest that the dead man and his wife were anything but a normal, law-abiding couple. There were no beer cans or stolen property or drugs. It was the experience of the investigators that fatal accidents such as this often involve drunk drivers, drug addicts or burglars more concerned about absconding with their stolen goods than keeping their eyes on the road. Every possibility had to be considered.

      Next, the crash investigators examined the white station wagon. It wasn’t as badly damaged as the red Holden, but they could easily see the point of impact at the front where the collision had occurred. Chris Field photographed the car from a number of different angles, capturing all of the damage.

      When this examination was complete, officers Field, Hill and Exton made their way to the third car further down and on the opposite side of the road. The gold Ford had come to rest against the gutter and it too, was very badly damaged.

      Immediately the officers noticed tyre marks on the nature strip next to the car. The scuff marks were fresh and couldn’t have been made by the gold Ford because it had not mounted the curb.

      The gold Ford did, however, have flakes of red paint from the Holden lodged in its front grill.

      Chris Field checked the nature strip closely and picked up a bit of plastic moulding, which he recognised as part of the bumper bar of a late model Holden – possibly a Commodore.

      Something was amiss. Why were there pieces of a Commodore near the wrecked gold Ford – but no Holden Commodore in sight?

      He then noticed a dent in the gold Ford that didn’t seem to be associated with the damage caused by the collision with the red Holden. There were pieces of green paint lodged in the dent.

      Senior Constable Field put two and two together. He figured that a green Holden Commodore had driven up onto the nature strip after the collision and then, in its haste to leave the scene, had tried to drive forward along the nature strip to get back onto the road. It appeared there hadn’t been enough room to pass between the wrecked gold Ford and a power pole on the nature strip, so the green Commodore had clipped the Ford leaving behind part of its bumper bar and paint work.

      Common sense told the officers that the driver of the green Holden Commodore had collected the driver of the gold Ford and driven him away. That made the collision a hit-and-run and the job became a four car, single fatal, double hit-run.

      Field immediately put out a bulletin for a late model, green Holden Commodore with front end damage. He then radioed D24 for an officer from the state forensic science laboratory to attend the scene and gather evidence like soil samples and tyre casts.

      Field and his team knew such samples may be needed later in court to link the missing vehicle with the accident scene.

      The next step in the investigation was to find the owner of the abandoned gold Ford. Registration details were taken from the smashed window of the car and a police check was run on the owner; Garry’s name was soon known to police.

      Field sent uniformed officers to the address only to find that Garry hadn’t lived there for some time. Field then ran an information bureau of records (IBR) check on Garry and wasn’t really surprised to find he had a long list of prior convictions – most of which were for driving and drug offences. The IBR check also listed Garry’s known associates.

      Four addresses were checked before police officers located Garry’s mother who gave them his current address – he was living with a mate called Nick.

      Chris Field left Exton and Hill at the accident scene and went with uniformed officers to the house in Noble Park. Using their powerful police torches, Field and the other officers illuminated the green Holden Commodore in the driveway of the house. It had obvious, recent front-end damage.

      It was now six hours since the collision. Examination of the exterior of the Commodore was interrupted by loud barking and the arrival of two dogs – one of them a bull terrier. Field recalls bluffing the dogs with his police baton before making his way to the front door of the house.

      A woman came out onto the front porch when the dogs started to bark. Field asked to speak to the driver of the green Commodore.

      The woman retreated for a moment, told someone to say nothing, and then returned to tell Field a story. Her boyfriend Nick, and his mate Garry, had been at the pub watching a strip show when they noticed Garry’s car was being stolen from the car park. They’d pursued the thieves until Garry’s car had been involved in an accident. Nick had driven them home and, according to the woman, was going to report the whole thing to the police the following day.

      Understandably, Field was sceptical and asked to see Garry. He was led into the lounge room where a man in his mid-20s was lying on the couch covered with a blanket.

      Field asked him to stand up, which he did reluctantly and with great difficulty. It was obvious Garry’s legs were severely bruised and one of his wrists was swollen enough to suggest it was broken.

      Ironically, as Garry repeated the story the woman had told, and denied any involvement in the accident, evidence to the contrary literally fell from his lap. As soon as he stood up bits of windscreen glass began dropping from his tracksuit.

      Field cut him short. ‘Don’t insult our intelligence, mate. Tell us what really happened.’

      Garry and Nick finally admitted to their part in the fatal collision but denied, when asked, that they’d been drag racing.

      Garry and Nick showed no obvious signs of regret or remorse when told the СКАЧАТЬ