‘We are broken’: What heartbroken parents want fatal crash driver to know
The parents of Alyssa Postle, 17, who was killed in a crash with a P-plater behind the wheel, say they have been “let down by the legal system” as the driver received a suspended licence and no conviction.
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They are milling about in the car park outside a pub, a gaggle of school mates coming up with Plan B. Alyssa Postle is here, in her denim skirt, hoodie and big smile, one of the social butterflies who flitted about the school earlier in the day drumming up numbers for the night out.
The 17-year-old enjoys making new friends and plans to know everyone in Year 12 before graduation.
That’s just 100 days away. Tomorrow at Genesis Christian College, in Bray Park north of Brisbane, there’ll be ice-cream, swimming and jumping about on inflatable toys to celebrate the milestone.
Alyssa is so excited about that, a bit of childish fun in among study, exams and deciding what she wants to do with the rest of her life.
But they’ve hit a snag tonight, wedged as they are in the awkward in-between of teenager and adult. They’ve just been told that because it’s after 6pm and some of them are under 18, they can’t have a meal at the Warner Tavern.
Still, they’re old enough to drive. And KFC is just 3km up the road.
“Race to KFC,” one calls.
As they pile into cars, someone shouts that classic schoolyard taunt, “Last one there’s a rotten egg!”
Alyssa jumps in with her mate Josie [name changed for legal reasons], leaving her Hyundai i30 behind. There are at least six cars, heading along the two-lane suburban road. The speed limit is 70km/h.
The first three drivers are doing much more than that. One of them is 17-year-old Josie. She’s had her P-plates for two weeks.
Then it happens. Josie overtakes one of the other cars in her Subaru Impreza. It spins out of control, careening across a grass verge and colliding, rear-first, with a power pole. The pole sparks, flickers, and goes out.
Josie is okay. Alyssa is not moving.
In the chaos of it all, as ambulance and police are called, Xander Groenewald, one of the slower drivers, arrives at the scene. He helps Josie out of the car.
Then he climbs into the crumpled wreck. He sits with Alyssa, his new love, until the ambulance arrives. He rests her head on his shoulder.
Nothing is the same again.
A young girl fights for life. A mother and father, fearful and confused, drive to the Royal Brisbane Hospital. A boyfriend goes home with blood on his shirt and closes his bedroom door. A novice driver is interviewed by police, bound for the courts. Friendships crumble. And a community asks, again, “How do we stop this horror?”
OH, MY BABY GIRL
Kellie Postle knew the news was not good the moment she saw the social worker’s face.
“I just knew,” she says.
Her daughter Alyssa, or Lyss, or Bubbles, the girl “full of kindness and empathy and joy”, was unconscious and in critical condition. It was Tuesday night, August 11, 2020. Doctors would know more in 12 to 24 hours.
Kellie, 49, and husband Troy, 51, were allowed to go in and see Alyssa.
“I just remember seeing her with tubes and wires and cuts and swollen and bruised and just, I was physically ill,” says Kellie, her tears falling.
“I went over to her and just said, ‘Oh, my baby girl’.
“I’ll never forget that moment when I saw her there.”
![Kellie and Troy Postle, the parents of Alyssa Postle, 17: “I’ll never forget the moment when I saw her [in the hospital bed].” Picture: David Kelly.](https://content.api.news/v3/images/bin/eb6e85ca0d37ec1c56f352d9d2c5539e?width=650)
As they sat by Alyssa’s bed, willing her to wake up, the day’s events pinballed through Kellie’s mind.
She remembered sitting at her receptionist desk at Genesis Christian College when Alyssa and Josie arrived, all smiles, with coffees they’d made for Kellie and her co-worker.
She remembered saying to her boss, “Here’s my gorgeous girl”.
Then Alyssa sprung the question. Could she go to the Warner Tavern with some friends tonight?
Kellie was noncommittal; it was a school night, Alyssa had never gone to the tavern with friends and she’d only got her P-plates the week before.
But she was a good kid and her final year had been messed about by Covid-19 restrictions. Kellie told her she’d think about it.
When she walked into their Bray Park home that afternoon, Alyssa was at the sink in her running gear, doing the washing up.
The talented athlete with the long, muscular legs had been for a run, done her study and some laundry. Kellie told her she could go out but she had to be home by 8.30pm.
“She kind of wasn’t happy about that,” recalls Kellie, “but I said, ‘Well, that’s the rule, Alyssa’.”
In typical teenage style, she tried Dad. Troy smiles briefly at the memory. “What your mother said,” he replied.
Alyssa said bye and walked to her car.
Ten minutes later, Kellie got a text. “Hey mum, I’m sorry I got cranky. I should be home by 8.30. Kiss, kiss.”
Kellie and Troy look at each other, the pain etched on their faces as the memories and heartache fill their loungeroom.
They met when she was 18 and he was 20. They’ve had their battles but nothing like this. As young parents, they learned their eldest child, Adam, was autistic. He was two when diagnosed. They were told he’d be non-verbal and never go to a mainstream school.
Adam’s intensive therapy began just as Alyssa was born and her bond with her brother was strong.
“She was dragged from pillar to post when we went to all his appointments and therapy,” says Kellie.
“She was always inclusive, empathetic, a beautiful heart and she looked out for her brother.” Adam, now 20, did go to a mainstream school and was accepted into university to study town planning.
Early the morning after the crash, before heading back to the hospital, the couple picked up Alyssa’s car from the tavern. The sun was just coming up. Kellie went home. Troy drove to the crash site.
“I saw all the skid marks on the road and that’s when things started to tick in my head,” says Troy, a pool serviceman and plumber.
“I could see it all; I could see that the car had lost control and spun 180 on the road. I could see it all. I went home and said to Kell, ‘I think there’s high speed involved’.”
They’d have to think about that later. And they have. They’ve raged and cried and screamed.
But right then, they needed to be with Alyssa.
As they fielded texts and calls from concerned family and friends, including Josie’s mother, the Postles went with Adam and their then 11-year-old daughter, Ella, to the hospital.
They had a meeting with the neurosurgeon and doctors in the afternoon. The impact of the crash was so severe, Alyssa’s head had collided heavily with the internal centre pillar of the car.
The specialists showed them a scan of Alyssa’s brain.
“And they said,” recalls Kellie, “‘We’re really sorry, there’s no brain activity whatsoever. There’s nothing we can do’.”
Over the next two days, the heartbroken family said goodbye. They washed Alyssa’s long, brown hair. One of her good friends, Torryn Squires, braided it. They got her out of her purple hospital gown and into her own clothes. A cousin brought his guitar and sang Hallelujah. Ella wailed and screamed. Hospital staff wept.
At 1.45pm on Friday, August 14, 2020, the machinery keeping Alyssa alive was removed.
Her mum and dad, brother and sister, lay on the bed with her, Troy holding her arm, “just feeling her pulse”. They each chose a song and the music played as Alyssa Postle ebbed away.
THE RIPPLE EFFECT
The first thing Torryn Squires did on her 18th birthday last month was visit Alyssa’s grave.
“I woke up and went there. So that it felt like she was still here on my birthday,” she says.
She wipes away tears and twiddles with her locket, the one bearing a photograph of the two talented athletes who had been friends since they were nine.
They met at competitions; two sporty kids from different clubs drawn to each other.
“She was encouraging and you instantly felt like you could talk to her and laugh,” says Torryn, who also went to Genesis.
She wishes she was there the night of the crash. Somehow, she thinks that would have made a difference. Her mum, Deb Squires, gently counsels her, “You don’t know that.”
But the triathlete with ambitions of making the Olympics had training early the next morning, so she decided against going out.
She woke to a flurry of texts telling her Alyssa was in hospital.
“I just remember running to Mum and just breaking down. I thought she’d be okay, though. I didn’t realise it was that bad.”
Days later, she was braiding Alyssa’s hair as she lay unconscious in hospital, a final loving gesture for a best friend.
Alyssa was quirky, fun and caring, she says. She loved to sing, make TikTok posts, and was a sucker for a selfie. Torryn smiles at the memory of Alyssa’s bouncing run, a product of her love for triple jump.
She’d made the state titles in that event, as well as the 400 metres, and had plans to coach Little Athletics.
Her coach Gary Patterson remembers standing with Alyssa at Zammit Oval at Deception Bay the night before the crash, talking about her future.
She wasn’t sure if she should go to university to study midwifery or physical education teaching, or take a gap year. He’d told her the latter was worth considering. There was no rush.
“She was a girl who was effervescent, always bubbly, lovely to coach,” he says.
“She wasn’t out there challenging the world and leading the pack or stepping over the line. She was always having fun within the limits, whether it was respectability or a safety issue, or common sense, she always set the boundaries well for herself.”
Her death sent tremors through her 20-strong training squad. About half had time away from training, a couple never returned.
“They didn’t want to come down because the memories with Alyssa were too strong,” he says. “There was never the whole group back together.”
Sadly, the same is true for the school friendship group. Torryn says different members of the cohort dealt with Alyssa’s death in different ways.
She hasn’t spoken with Josie since about a week after the crash, when photos of Josie and other schoolmates drinking and partying together started to appear on social media.
“She started partying and dealing with it in a way that I wouldn’t have chosen,” Torryn says. “I gather she’s struggling … people go about it in different ways but I find it hard to talk to Josie.”
She sees a bit of Xander Groenewald, though. He and Alyssa had kept their blossoming romance secret, even from Torryn.
It was one of those tricky teenage dilemmas; another boy, one who was driving one of the cars alleged to have been speeding, had invited Alyssa to the formal.
Torryn says she knows now Alyssa didn’t talk about Xander because she didn’t want to hurt the other boy’s feelings.
“That was Alyssa,” she says.
But Xander’s parents knew. Birgit Groenewald says her son had asked if he could bring Alyssa around to meet her and husband Ben on the Friday.
It would have been the first time, Xander, now 19 and still too upset to talk publicly about Alyssa or the events of that night, had brought a girlfriend home.
“He must have been in love with her. I think he was. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be there all the time at Kellie and Troy’s place.”
Getting to know Xander and the Groenewalds is one of the slivers of happiness the Postles have enjoyed since Alyssa’s death. The parents have become close friends and Xander often takes Ella to her swimming or netball lessons.
“He’s like a brother to Ella, he’s a big part of her life,” says Birgit.
“He just says, ‘Mum, you would have loved Alyssa’.” Birgit wishes she’d met her. “When I see what a beautiful family she has, I think she would have been the right person for Xander. Definitely.”
She has watched the Postles battle with their grief, and with the fallout. For a while, a number of the teenagers there the night of the crash came around to the Groenewalds, sitting by a fire and talking about Alyssa.
Then, they faded away and got on with their lives. Xander has no contact with them.
“It’s heartbreaking,” she says.
“You would have thought everybody would stay together in this.”
The truth is, trauma affects people differently.
A 2018 Trauma and Young People report, co-authored by Orygen, the national centre for young mental health, and Phoenix Australia, the centre for post-traumatic mental health, found some young people are resilient, while others suffer poor mental and physical health which can exacerbate over time, including post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Trauma-related mental health diagnoses go beyond PTSD, and can include anxiety, depression, psychosis, personality disorders, self-harm and suicide-related behaviours, eating disorders, and comorbidity with alcohol and substance misuse,” the report found.
It said early intervention by mental health experts was critical but many young people do not seek help, some because they fear the consequences of disclosure or are ashamed or embarrassed.
And, sadly, many young people experience the trauma of fatal road accidents.
The Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety – Queensland reports that while 13.7 per cent of the licensed population is aged between 16 to 24, the age group represented a quarter of driver or passenger fatalities in Queensland in 2018. Those on P-plates had a higher involvement in fatal crashes than learners or those with open licences.
ALYSSA’S LEGACY
The aftermath of a tragedy is a foggy, muddled time, filled with snippets of information and chunks of things to do. And questions, so many questions.
Kellie and Troy wonder about Alyssa’s last moments. Was she scared, telling Josie to slow down, or was she thrilled by the risk? They say Alyssa wasn’t a reckless girl – she’d monitor Troy and Adam’s driving speed – but they know teenagers can do silly things when together.
“She always wanted to fit in, so whether or not with peer pressure … we don’t know,” says Kellie.
Josie has no memory of the crash. Still, Kellie and Troy thought she’d have visited them by now. The only communication from Josie was a brief letter, forwarded to them by a police officer, in which she spoke of what Alyssa meant to her.
“I was waiting and hoping she would come to me but it didn’t happen,” says Kellie, who remembers how excited the two girls were when their mothers took them on a shopping expedition, looking for formal dresses.
Through their lawyer, Josie and her family declined to provide a statement to Qweekend.
The Postles reasoned that Josie had legal advice not to contact them after she was charged with dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death in late September.
But Josie faced Children’s Court in May this year. Her license was suspended for 12 months and she was put on probation for two years. No conviction was recorded.
An 18-year-old man has been charged with racing between vehicles and will appear in the Pine Rivers Magistrates Court on July 28.
At Josie’s court appearance, her family did not make eye contact with the Postles. The once-close schoolmate cohort had split into two camps; those supporting the Postles, and those supporting Josie.
“They’re moving on, Alyssa’s not here anymore,” says Kellie, robotically pushing the fabric on the couch backwards and forwards.
“I started to hear things that really upset me. The first thing I heard was the day we took Alyssa off life support, Josie had gone to a gathering with that group. And I couldn’t comprehend that. I couldn’t understand. That really hurt me. I just thought, ‘How can you ...’ ” She trails off, weeping.
The Postles have endured watching life go on.
They’ve watched as Alyssa’s schoolmates, including Josie, have ticked off milestones – graduation, muck-up day, the formal, getting jobs, going to university.
On advice from her psychologist, Kellie has weaned herself off looking at the social media posts of Alyssa’s friends. She’s been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“This has just broken our family,” says Troy.
“I’m just a broken man. People ask me how I’m going and that’s the word I use. That sums it up. Lost me girl. It’s the crash and the events after the crash. It’s not an accident, it’s a crash, I don’t call it an accident. No way.”
Adds Kellie: “Neither did the judge or the police officer.” They do not believe Josie’s penalty was adequate.
“The legal system is wrong,” says Troy. “They’re letting kids drive and then if something goes wrong, she gets charged as a kid.
“If she’s old enough to get a licence and be treated like an adult, she has to face the full consequence of an adult. And she simply didn’t in this case. This just hasn’t affected us; it’s generations of our family now. No grandkids, no family tree. The ripple effect goes way past this house.”
“I think she’s got off,” says Troy.
“Yes, potentially, she’ll have her demons in her head. I think that’s justified. She’s given us a life sentence. She needs to be held accountable. And she wasn’t.”
They believe that at a minimum, under-18s who kill someone when driving should have to take part in a restorative justice program, such as participating in a road safety education campaign.
“Something where she was uncomfortable, something where she had to do something she didn’t want to do,” says Kellie. They believe a conviction should be recorded. “And potentially, go to jail for a month.
“I know there are repeat offenders and they’ll say jail doesn’t work but it might be enough for some people,” she says.
“Because all of those kids in that group have gone, ‘Wow, Josie caused Alyssa’s death from reckless driving and look, nothing has changed really for her’.”
They intend lobbying for change. Under Queensland law, a 17-year-old can sit for their provisional licence, provided they’ve completed 100 hours of supervised driving under a learner licence.
The Postles want the P-plate age raised to 18. That would limit the number of school-going drivers taking their immaturity “from the schoolyard to the road” and have them dealt with as adults if they break the law.
“If Josie was 18, there could have been more of a sentence,” says Kellie.
“I understand emotionally and mentally, she’s got to live with this for the rest of her life but I still think there needs to be an example set.”
They think that for at least six months after getting their P-plates, drivers should not be allowed mates in the car, any time of the day, unless the friends have had their open licence for two years.
“They need to learn how to drive on their own with no distractions,” says Kellie.
The Postles know other parents share their pain and frustration. They’ve talked and cried with a number of families who have lost children on the roads.
One of them is the McGuinness family. In 2012, Melissa McGuinness’s son, Jordan-Hayes McGuinness, 18, crashed into a broken-down car, killing himself and four young people in the other car.
Melissa and husband Peter formed You Choose – Youth Road Safety, a not-for-profit organisation that takes Melissa’s powerful speech about their shocking tragedy to schools in a bid to stop young people making the same terrible choices as Jordan. He was speeding, drunk and had marijuana in his system.
“Melissa and Peter are amazing, inspirational,” says Kellie. Troy is glad to have met Peter because, “I need blokes like him in my life to help me”.
The Postles, led by Kellie, have created their own campaign, Live4Lyss, and now raise money for You Choose, with help from loved ones, especially Troy’s brother and his wife, Grant and Cindy Postle. At some stage, when she can bear it, Kellie intends giving You Choose talks to schools, empowering teenagers to take a stand against reckless driving.
“We need to create a culture in young people to give them that power to be brave and not feel like they can’t speak up,” says Kellie.
The two families share a similar loss but the circumstances are different. Jordan was the one driving recklessly and, following advice from the police, the McGuinnesses did not contact the families whose children Jordan killed.
Those families were upset by that. After a story in Qweekend last year, Melissa had some contact with some of the families.
The question of who should contact who and when is difficult and delicate territory. Kellie figures Josie is scared, feels guilty, and believes too much time has passed since Alyssa was killed.
But Kellie wants to speak with her. She intends getting in contact.
“Just to let her know where I’m at with it all,” says Kellie. “And let her know that I’ve forgiven her.
“And I forgive her, I do. I don’t want to hold onto hatred because that’s not what I’m about and that’s not what Alyssa was about. And she would hate to see that this has happened.
“For me, moving forward, I don’t want to have all this toxicity and negativity. I can’t. If I hold onto that angst, that’s going to eat me up. And I’ve already got enough to deal with, with the grief and loss of Alyssa. It’s not going to help anyone. It’s not going to bring Alyssa back.”
Troy is not quite there yet. He’s still angry, an emotion that has shocked him because “I’m a placid man”. He wakes up in the middle of the night, breathless.
“I’m not as far up the road as Kell,” he says.
“I wouldn’t go getting on my phone and reaching out to them, not yet. But I will support Kell 100 per cent and back her.”
Their focus now is on looking after Adam and Ella. Adam is still “very angry about it all” and has deferred his studies.
A few weeks ago, Kellie found Ella in her bedroom, clinging to one of her favourite photos of her and Alyssa, sobbing.
Photos and memorabilia of Alyssa adorn the walls. There she is at a bus stop, at her Year 9 dinner dance, with her family. Her number 225 Strathpine Spitfires Little Athletics jersey, framed and presented to the Postles when the club announced a perpetual 400m award in her name, has pride of place.
A blue butterfly urn sits on a sideboard, holding Alyssa’s ashes. Her bedroom remains as she left it, the night she walked out in denim skirt and hoodie to be with her friends.
Come the first anniversary of her death, August 14, the Story Bridge will be lit up in blue, Alyssa’s favourite colour.
The Postles will gather with relatives, the Groenewalds, the Squires and the McGuinnesses at a nearby hotel to watch it sparkle and to remember “a joyful, happy spirit”.
“Our legacy for Alyssa is that something positive has got to come out of this,” says Kellie. “We can’t ever get her back; we can’t change what happened but we have a choice of how we go in the future. I just want love and light and to be as positive as I can be. That’s what Lyss would have wanted.”
For help call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or lifeline.com.au
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