GOOD SAMARITAN DIES FROM ELECTROCUTION IN CAR SMASH
A small town in northern NSW is in mourning over a dual tragedy – the electrocution of a young man who went to the aid of a teenager who’d crashed her car into a power pole.
The 19-year-old local woman is believed to have died after her Mazda sedan veered off the Oxley Highway near Gunnedah yesterday.
No one else was in the car and about an hour later a 20-year-old local man came across the accident. But he was electrocuted when he stepped out of his car, Inspector Fred Trench from the Oxley local area command said.
Both victims were from the small town of Mullaley, south-west of Gunnedah, and their bodies were found only metres apart.
”He’s pulled up some time after [the accident], got out of his vehicle and stepped on power lines that were down,” Inspector Trench said. ”We believe they were known to each other.”
The bodies were found by a passing motorist on the way to work some time after 4.30am.
The dead man’s car was next to the crash site with the engine still running, the lights on and a door open.
Bystanders tried performing CPR on the woman but were unable to revive her.
A post-mortem exam will be conducted as part of a coronial investigation.
Meanwhile, three people have died in separate accidents on Victoria’s roads yesterday.
The first fatality was a passenger in a ute which slammed into a power pole in McGregor Road, Pakenham, in south-east Melbourne. Later, a female passenger died when a car rolled at Denver, north-west of Melbourne.
The third death occurred around the same time when a motorcycle and a car collided at Springfield, north of Melbourne. The male motorcyclist died at the scene.
The state’s road toll now stands at 12.
