Bronko Hoang reunited with Westmead hospital staff after car crash
Emerging from a coma, car crash victim Bronko Hoang was told by hospital worker Kaylene Tanti the unfathomable news his sister, wife and unborn twins hadn’t survived. In an emotional reunion, the pair spoke of the moment that changed their lives forever.
NSW
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Two years ago, hospital social worker Kaylene Tanti was forced to break the unbearable news to car crash survivor Bronko Hoang that his pregnant wife, their unborn twins and his sister had all died.
Now the pair has been reunited inside the intensive care unit where Mr Hoang’s life was saved, but where he learned the devastating outcome for his wife Katherine and his family.
Throwing his arms around Ms Tanti, a crying Mr Hoang exclaimed: “Thank you for the support, for saving my life. I’m so sorry you had to carry the burden of telling me what happened.”
For Ms Tanti, who placed a gentle hand on Mr Hoang’s shoulder, it was also an emotional reunion.
The last she saw him he was intubated and had just woken from a two-week induced coma in the intensive care unit at Westmead Hospital. It was there she delivered the unfathomable truth.
“You woke up asking for your wife; you were in shock, crying,” she said.
“I said you were the only one who made it, there were so many losses.
“I could see the grief in your eyes; I’ve often wondered how you’ve been doing.”
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, she added: “Everyone in ICU remembers Bronko; it would have been confronting for him to return to ICU.
“He lunged forward to hug me; you could feel the sincerity.
“Telling him (the news) affected me. It was hard, one of the most traumatic circumstances I’ve dealt with. But I’m in awe of how well he’s done.”
Ms Tanti recalled the terrible moment she informed Mr Hoang about the loss of his family — he screamed so hysterically doctors had to sedate him.
Mr Hoang, a mental health worker, is still trying to make sense of the blur of a silver Mazda 3, travelling at speeds of 145km/h, smashing head-on into his car as he was teaching his younger sister to drive.
The crash occurred on a familiar stretch of road they had driven on countless times towards their home at Glenmore Park, in Sydney’s west.
Mr Hoang was the only occupant of the car to survive the crash, but suffered two punctured lungs, crushed intestines, a broken left foot and bleeding on the brain.
“I’m the only one who survived; that day, what happened, the guilt and hospitalisation, changed my life,” he said, his voice breaking.
“It changed everything. If you are to summarise how I’m feeling right now … to say it’s traumatising is an understatement, to say it’s a horror movie is child’s play.
“I have good and bad days; I’m still breathing, that’s a good thing.”
On Thursday Mr Hoang will endeavour to summon the courage to attend Penrith District Court where drunk, unlicensed driver Richard Moananu, 31, is due to be sentenced over the fatal crash.
He was found guilty of two counts of manslaughter and one count of aggravated driving causing grievous bodily harm.
Moananu had been drinking from 10.30am to 6.45pm on the day of the crash and returned a .204 blood alcohol reading.
He was also driving on an expired licence when he veered on to the wrong side of the road.
“I don’t remember much after I woke from the coma, but I went to see my babies in the mortuary. They were a week away from entering the world, but died on impact,” Mr Hoang said.
“Roman and Archer had not a chance of surviving the force of that impact. They looked alive (in the morgue). I prodded them, and said, ‘come on, wake up’. For a while I thought Katherine would come back, too. She was everything to me; my best friend, my wife and she was about to become mother to our boys. Every day I wonder how our lives would have been, how my sister Belinda, who was turning 18, would be now.”
The black marble headstone at the gravesite of his four loved ones at Liverpool cemetery is a hard place for Mr Hoang to visit. He does not want to remember they are no longer here.
In a final conversation with his wife, after a neighbour died, they discussed life after death and she told him to “find happiness’’ if she left first.
Mr Hoang is now in a relationship with their close friend who supported him through his grief and has offered him a second chance at happiness.
“I have to live on for Katherine, I want my happiness back,” he said.
“We discussed two weeks before she died that if she went first I should keep living for her and for her to do the same. I’m slowly getting there. I’ve found love again. It doesn’t take away the emptiness of what I’ve (felt), but she’s a beautiful part of my life.’’
As for the man who caused the crash, Mr Hoang would one day like to meet him and talk about the incident. “I want to sit down with him and ask what was going through his mind?”