Joanne Shanahan’s family talks about the fatal crash that killed her and the heartbreaking phone calls they needed to make
Five years after Joanne Shanahan’s death sent shockwaves around the state, her family reflect on the sliding doors moments of that terrible day and the horrific phone calls that changed their lives.
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It’s a phone call no parent should have to make.
But Peter Shanahan knows the news has to come from him, so he asks the paramedic if he can borrow her phone.
His own is gone, a casualty of the wreck out of which he has just climbed and one he knows will soon become big news in South Australia.
He also knows his wife Joanne, one of the state’s top police officers, is dead. She died the instant the other car had slammed into theirs moments ago.
Miraculously, Peter has survived. And he knows the first thing he needs to do is call their children.
The old Nokia the paramedic hands him isn’t even a smart phone, but fortunately Peter knows his kids’ numbers off by heart. First he rings his daughter Eleni. Then his son Nick. He’s in the midst of the hardest 10 minutes of his life, but knows he needs to break the news to them himself.
“I just told them their mum had died,” he recalls quietly. “I said: ‘Mummy’s died’. I had to say it. I didn’t want anyone else to tell them.”
COVID AND ANZAC DAY
It’s been five years since that horrible day back on April 25, 2020 and we’re sitting inside the comfortable Shanahan family home in Adelaide’s leafy inner-south.
It’s the home Nick and Eleni grew up in, the one where the naughty corner used to be at the laundry door and where a wall near the old pianola is still adorned with dozens of religious crosses – a tribute to their mother’s penchant of collecting them during her travels.
It’s the home where Nick and Eleni’s friends were always made to feel welcome, where there was always enough food for an extra two or three people at dinner time, just in case someone knocked on the door.
And it’s the home where Joanne Shanahan is up early on the day of the horrific three-car collision that would claim two lives and send shockwaves around the state.
Joanne has always been an early riser, but on this day she isn’t alone.
It’s Anzac Day but it’s also the early days of Covid, so instead of attending a dawn service, she is among millions of Australians standing at the end of their driveways paying solitary tribute to our nation’s service men and women.
Many of the Shanahan neighbours are also out at dawn. Music from a bagpipe a few houses down fills the air. This will be the last time Joanne’s neighbours see her.
At 55, she is one of the most prominent members of SA Police after 38 years in the force. She was just the third woman to be appointed chief superintendent and had received an Australian Police Medal the previous year.
Right now she is playing a leading role in SAPOL’s Covid response. Husband Peter, eight years her senior, is the force’s general counsel and works closely with Police Commissioner and Covid co-ordinator Grant Stevens on the state’s response.
The pandemic, only a few weeks old, has taken over the Shanahan house and even on this Anzac Day Saturday there are calls to take, emails to respond to and decisions to be made.
WHY DIDN’T I TELL HER
But around lunchtime they decide it is time for an outing. They need a new vacuum cleaner and find one at The Good Guys in Hectorville. The excursion will also be a chance for them to take their new Holden Acadia for a spin.
Before they go, Joanne has a shower and puts on some make-up and jewellery to make herself presentable to the outside world. When she is ready to go, Peter recalls, she looks better than presentable. She looks “fantastic”.
“I thought, my God, you look just gorgeous to be going to buy a vacuum cleaner,” Peter says as he sits on the couch with his children. To his eternal regret, he doesn’t tell her what he is thinking. “That was a massive lesson for me – when you think something nice like that, and you don’t say it, what’s the use of it?
“You’ve just thought it – it never goes anywhere, so it’s just for you. So I wish I’d said ‘Oh Jo, you look gorgeous’. That would have been the last chance I had to say that to her.”
Before they leave the house, the couple ask daughter Eleni, then 22, if she wants to join them. She declines. She had a few drinks with some friends the night before (less than 10, of course, because these are Covid times) and she’s keen to relax in the house by herself for a while.
But she tells her mum she looks great and goes outside to wave them goodbye. As they are walking to the car, Peter asks Joanne if she wants to drive. She declines. The Acadia only has about 100km on the odometer and is a bigger car than she is accustomed to driving.
Her decision is one of a million sliding doors moments that Peter has since tried desperately to avoid dwelling over.
MOMENT OF IMPACT
Not long after pulling out of the driveway, they ring Nick, then 24, who has spent the previous night with his partner Morgan. It’s a chance to test the new car’s Bluetooth system.
But Nick doesn’t answer. He’s upstairs at Dymocks in Rundle Mall and doesn’t want to be “that guy” who takes phone calls in a quiet bookstore.
His lack of response sparks a lighthearted conversation in the car about “bloody useless” children not answering their phones. On reflection, however, Nick’s decision to not pick up is a blessing. If he had answered, he would have been on the phone at the time of the crash.
If they couldn’t test the new car’s Bluetooth, Peter figures they can at least try its music connectivity, so he asks Joanne to have a crack at putting on some tunes through Apple Play.
It’s now about 1.30pm, and they are still only a few minutes away from home. They pull up on the intersection of Cross and Fullarton roads in Urrbrae.
And then, milliseconds before his world turns upside down and just after he has looked across to see his wife looking down at her phone, Peter hears her scream: “SHIT”.
“With the tone of her voice, of that one word… I had time to think that we were going to get hit by an Exocet missile or something,” Peter says. “It was just that… the most horrified ‘shit’ that you could ever hear.”
And then comes the moment of impact. Of catastrophic impact.
A VW ute driven by 20-year-old Harrison Kitt is travelling at 167km/h before slamming into their car. It also collides with a BMW driven by St Peters woman Tania McNeill. Ms McNeill is also killed.
For Peter Shanahan, the crash itself is a blur of noise and action. When the dust settles, the car’s top is “wiped out” and Joanne is “lying flat next to me”.
“I spoke to her, but it was clear that she was dead,” he says. “I yelled out for someone to help, I said ‘my adrenaline is pumping too much, can you please help, because I can’t get a pulse’.
“Some lovely lady jumped in the back, and she happened to be a nurse… she jumped in the back of the car and was doing CPR but I couldn’t look in the end, I just said goodbye to her (Joanne) because you could see… the compressions… she was not alive.”
It’s a scene of carnage but Peter escapes with minor injuries. He’s got a few cuts and bruises and discovers later he has a broken rib and ligament damage to both his shoulders.
ARE YOU F..CKING KIDDING ME
Eleni is 11 minutes into a show on Netflix when her phone rings. It’s an unknown number so she ignores it, thinking it’s probably a scam. But then it rings again. She picks up this time, curious.
Five years on, the pain of that day is still raw as she recalls the 30-second phone call that will shape the rest of her life. Tears flow as she talks, flanked by her brother and father who naturally and lovingly draw closer to offer their support.
She’s only told this story once before, to her psychiatrist, but today she’s determined to get through it. To honour her mum.
“Are you f..king kidding me… are you joking,” is her response on the phone when her father, a master of dad jokes and not immune to telling the odd tall story to wind up his kids, says there’s been an accident and Joanne is dead.
“But he didn’t sound like it and in my head I was like ‘why is he calling me on a random number – that’s a weird joke to play’.
“And then he repeated himself and he said ‘I’ve got to call Nick’ and then I said ‘are you OK – all I need to know is are you OK’.”
Peter says he is but he is headed to the Royal Adelaide Hospital to be checked over. Eleni calls her friend Dana Jackway, who arrives within minutes and drives her to the hospital.
MY BODY WENT NUMB
Nick is shopping with his partner Morgan Swearse. They have left Dymocks (he bought the book Legion Versus Phalanx) and made their way to JB Hi Fi when Nick’s phone rings.
It’s an unknown number, but because he’s rejected a call from his dad only a few minutes earlier, something makes him answer this one. His dad delivers the news. The call lasts about 15 seconds.
“I was like, ‘this is a very weird prank… are you sure… are you serious right now’,” he recalls. “And the way he said yes, I was like ‘OK, he’s not kidding’. And it was very weird… my entire body went numb.”
He recognises he is going into shock, leaves the store and sits down. Then he starts walking to the RAH. In the rain. He remembers thinking how grim the world is. Eleni calls.
“I think what I said to her was ‘what the f..k is going on right now,” he says.
En route to the hospital he calls some of his close friends. His mother had always been a huge part of their friendship group and they needed to know.
When Nick gets to the RAH, Peter asks him and Eleni to ring family and friends. It’s only a few hours before the crash will be on the nightly news, and Peter knows it’s important loved ones find out before they see it on TV. And it’s important that the news comes direct from them.
HEARTBREAKING PHONE CALLS
The first phone calls are the hardest. Eleni rings her godmother Liz Owen, her mum’s best friend. A couple of years later Eleni will buy Liz’s Max Milan clothes store in Stirling. But today, she’s making the worst call she will ever have to make in her life.
It doesn’t go well. First Liz screams, then she can no longer talk. It’s too much for both of them and Eleni hands the phone to Grant Stevens, who is there with his Deputy Commissioner Linda Williams offering the family their support, to explain what has happened.
Nick gets the job of calling everyone else. He calls his mum’s sister Georgie, who tells her parents. Then he calls Peter’s family and other close friends. It’s a horrible, draining task but one he knows he must complete.
“I had to just detach myself from the entire situation and be like, OK, well I actually have things that I need to do right now that are a little bit more important than what I’m feeling,” he says.
“Dad and Eleni can’t do this. Someone has to do it. So I’m just going to have to do this. It was pretty awful.”
TOMORROW: Forgiveness, ‘what if’ moments, the funeral and keeping Joanne’s memory alive.
Originally published as Joanne Shanahan’s family talks about the fatal crash that killed her and the heartbreaking phone calls they needed to make
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