Daniel Andrews’ triple-0 call from car accident involving wife and Ryan Meuleman revealed
Daniel Andrews’ triple-0 call from a contentious car crash with his wife can be revealed for the first time as the bombshell recording raises new questions about the accident. Listen to the audio.
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Daniel Andrews’ triple-0 call from his infamous car accident can be revealed, with the former premier telling emergency services “we’ve hit him.”
The audio directly contradicts a police statement the former premier made a month after the crash in which he said “the cyclist hit our vehicle” and raises further questions about the accident that has dogged the former premier for more than a decade.
The Herald Sun has audio of the phone call that Mr Andrews made following a collision with a teenage cyclist in 2013 which is at the centre of a bitter legal battle.
Mr Andrews and his wife Catherine, who was driving at the time, have consistently held that cyclist Ryan Meuleman was at fault, with Mr Andrews telling reporters in 2017 that the teen was “moving at speed’’ when he “absolutely T-boned the car”.
And in his statement to police signed on February 5, 2013 at Springvale police station, Mr Andrews said “I want to make it clear - the cyclist hit our vehicle”.
Ryan Meuleman spent 10 days in hospital as he recovered from broken ribs, a punctured lung and had some of his spleen removed after being flown to the Royal Children’s Hospital.
The story was exposed by the Herald Sun.
In the call on January 7, 2013, Mr Andrews describes the accident.
“We’ve turned right into Ridley Street and a kid’s come flying through on the bike path and we’ve hit him,” Mr Andrews says.
“He’s a teenager...I’d say he’d be......he’d be 15.”
The operator asked how many people needed an ambulance and asked where the teenager was and who was with him.
“I’m just about 10 metres away, trying to get a mobile phone signal. My wife is with him at the moment,” he said.
The operator also asked if anyone else had called an ambulance.
“Was someone else on the phone to the ambulance maybe?”, the operator said.
Mr Andrews replied: “Ahhh, I don’t think so...ahh, my wife, my wife might be.”
Listen to the audio of the call above.
The operator added: “No worries....We’ve just had a job pop in from 10 Ridley Street, Blairgowrie, for a similar thing, for a bike vs car.”
Mr Andrews said: “Well, that’s the one.”
Mr Andrews had initially sought to block access to his phone records but later backflipped. Those records however are yet to be located and provided to the lawyers for Ryan Meuleman, who is suing Slater and Gordon over the way they handled his compensation claim.
Mr Andrews was opposition leader at the time of the accident.
Mrs Andrews was not breath tested and there were questions on how the police handled the incident at Blairgowrie on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.
Mr Andrews drove the car away from the scene.
The long serving premier hit out what he claimed were “appalling conspiracy theories” in September following reports that the investigation into the crash was “deeply flawed”.
Ryan Meuleman’s father Peter Meuleman called on Victorian police to reopen their investigation and said it was “disturbing” to hear the audio of the phone call.
“It’s really quite a chilling piece of audio,” he told The Herald Sun.
“It makes you relive it again and again, each time I hear it I picture my son going through it. And imagining him lying on the road.
“It makes me angry. That call was made six and half minutes after the crash. That’s a big gap.
“If I was involved in an accident the first thing you do is call triple zero.
“The case is about enabling my son to move forward with his life.
“I care about vindication for my son and getting justice for my son.
“He hasn’t been capable of holding down a job. That’s the mental scarring that is the legacy of this accident.”
He responded to criticism he or his wife had not contacted the Meuleman family by responding: “Now, let’s just be really clear about this, my wife, on the night, only a few hours after the incident, spoke with police, she spoke with the Royal Children’s Hospital. They couldn’t tell her much but redirected her back to police. I think she’s had five conversations with police in a week getting an update each time of his condition. So we’ve been well informed.”
Mr Andrews has stated he was sitting in the front passenger seat of the vehicle while his children were in the rear seat when the teenager careered over the bonnet and on to the windscreen.
The Andrews’ were returning from a trip to the beach, Mr Andrews told media, and his wife had “absolutely” not been drinking.
“The police did not breath test her, no. I’ve not been involved in an accident like that before. I don’t know how usual or unusual that is,” he said.
“This was one o’clock in the afternoon. We had three little kids in the car.
“She spent quite a lot of time with the Victoria Police. They were on the scene before the ambulance.
“She’s co-operated with police, there was every opportunity and she would have not difficulty in being breath tested if they asked her to.”
Ryan, in 2013, said he had looked left and right before entering the intersection and didn’t see a vehicle approaching.
“I think it was an accident. I only saw them for a split second and they hit me. Very scary,” he said.
“She (Mrs Andrews) was yelling ‘Help’ and ‘Call an ambulance’, ‘You’ll be all right.”
This week Victorian MP David Limbrick, under parliamentary privilege, said Daniel Andrews had admitted in the call that “he hit” the cyclist, which is now being described as #bikeboyscandal.
Mr Andrews and his wife issued a joint statement on Saturday saying: “The recording confirms the previous statements we’ve made on this matter. The cyclist came flying through from the bike path at Ridley Street and T-boned our car at speed.
“This matter has been comprehensively investigated over many years by Victoria Police Professional Standards Command and IBAC. Furthermore, the cyclist’s current legal proceedings have nothing to do with us. We are not a party to them.
While we are sorry that the cyclist was injured in the accident, we did nothing wrong.”
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Originally published as Daniel Andrews’ triple-0 call from car accident involving wife and Ryan Meuleman revealed
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