Woman allegedly confessed hit and run to boyfriend, but blamed him because he was ‘screwing’ someone else

A WOMAN allegedly confessed she had hit a cyclist west of Brisbane but then blamed the man she confessed to - her boyfriend.

Court

A WOMAN allegedly confessed to her boyfriend that she mowed down a cyclist but blamed him for the hit-and-run because he was off “screwing” someone else.

Robert William “Billy” Allen yesterday told the inquest into the death of Hong Kong national Shui Ki Chan of a conversation he had with Joanne McCauley, whom police believe deliberately ran over the 25-year-old.

Mr Chan’s body was found in a ditch on the side of the Warrego Highway at Gatton on August 23, 2012, after he died from hypothermia.

Mr Allen’s police statement was read out in court yesterday in which he recounted how he had been in a house with Ms McCauley and another man, Phil, when she asked him whether he’d heard about the “man who got run over at McDonald’s on the push bike?”

“Jo said, ‘I done it, it was me. If you weren’t off screwing [someone] else, it wouldn’t have happened. It was your fault’,” Mr Allen said in his statement.

“Jo was blaming me because just before (the incident) happened, she had been on the phone to me and I had told her that I wasn’t coming back.”

He went on to tell police that Ms McCauley allegedly said it was a “Chinese bloke” and that she had been driving towards Gatton when the cyclist rode up.

“She [told me she had] said … ‘watch this,’ and then swerved and ran over him,” Mr Allen’s statement said.

However the inquest heard she later recanted and told Mr Allen that she had in fact made up the story to “scare” Phil in a bid to keep him away from her son.

“She told me several times. I sort of believed it ... But she did have me convinced at several stages that she did do it. But she also had me convinced she didn’t do it,” he told the court yesterday.

He said the only part that led him to believe that she might have struck Mr Chan was her reaction when they drove past that particular section of road.

“She’d go all funny, like she didn’t want to be at that place,” he said.

“She’d close her eyes …”

Witness Robert Allen.

The court heard that when he asked her what was wrong, she replied: “this is where it happened.”

Coroner John Hutton said that was an “unusual reaction.”

“It’s unusual for a person to react in that matter, then to say this is where it happened. It’s almost an admission to what happened there,” he said.

Mr Allen, who denied that he was a disgruntled ex-boyfriend, said in his statement that Ms McCauley had often bragged to him that the police “couldn’t get her for it” and, if they did, she would involve him.

The inquest continues.