Brett Button sentencing: Hunter Valley bus crash survivors paint picture of moments before and after disaster
Shattered survivors of the Hunter Valley bus crash have given extraordinary insights into the moments they thought they would die as painkiller-induced driver Brett Button hit a roundabout too fast and with horrific consequences.
Newcastle
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Sharyn Junkeer was sitting in the front window seat of the Linq Buslines coach when her husband Jason, perched next to her in the aisle seat, quipped: “Gee, feels like he is coming in hot.”
He was bus driver Brett Button, a man who had again kept his ingestion of up to 400mg of the opioid painkiller Tramadol that day from his bosses and had already shown signs of risk taking as he and his 35 passengers travelled back to Singleton from a wedding reception in the Hunter Valley.
“As the wheels began to lift on the right hand side of the bus, I knew it was going to tip and I was certain, in that moment, that I was about to die,” Ms Junkeer would recall in horrifying detail while reading a victim impact statement in Newcastle District Court this week.
“The sensation of falling sideways and being completely powerless was terrifying.”
Her husband’s recollection of the moment Button took the coach onto the roundabout at Greta just after 11.30pm on June 11, last year, was just as graphic.
“I vividly remember the complete confusion when the bus entered the roundabout at speed,” Mr Junkeer told the court.
And then: “Only a moment later, moving to sheer terror and panic as the bus began to tip with the overwhelming sensation that I was about to die.
“I recall being propelled over the front barrier into the top corner and windscreen of the bus.
“My head, back and side of my upper body took the full force of the impact.”
In pleading guilty to the charges, Button had agreed his dangerous driving involved three different facets – his Tramadol use, his speeding as he hit the roundabout and his risk-taking behaviour.
That behaviour had begun earlier that day – on the way to Wandin Estate for the reception he was seen to brake “harder than necessary” and “went too fast around corners”, the agreed statement of facts read.
He fiddled with bus doors and left them open, he was “jovial and made jokes about doing donuts” and made a comment: “This is nothing to what I can drive. I drive a lot bigger buses than this.”
Button even stood with wedding guests as canapes were being served, discussing how quickly alcohol can leave your system and remarked he had tested himself “the other night after a few drinks” and blew “0.4 and it went down quite quickly”.
The Greta roundabout, the site of the crash, was about 12km from the reception and about a 15-minute drive.
They left at 11.17pm and the crash occurred shortly after 11.30pm.
The Junkeers were two of the 35 passengers on board that bus.
Directly behind them were Darcy Bulman and her partner Nick Dinakis.
Darcy would be one of 10 who died that night – Nick one of those grievously injured with a broken neck.
Darcy, like Ms Junkeer, was in a window seat on the passenger side – the side which crashed into the roadway.
She was one of five people sitting in window seats on the passenger side to perish – Kane Symons was six seats behind her, Angus Craig a further three seats back, and Lynan Scott and Tori Cowburn in the seats behind him.
Three other people – Kane’s partner Kyah McBride, Kyah’s mum Nadene McBride and Lynan’s husband Andrew – were in the aisle seats next to their loved ones and did not survive.
Rebecca Mullen was on the back seat of the bus and Zach Bray was in front of her on the driver’s side. They would also die.
As they travelled, Drew El Moussalli, who was sitting immediately behind Button with his partner, felt they were travelling too fast and they both put their seatbelts on. So did another passenger.
Ms Junkeer’s brother and sister-in-law, Laurie and Emma Healey, were seated seven rows back on the passenger side and also put their seatbelts on.
Button was then heard to say: “if you liked that corner, you’re going to like this one.”
Mr Dinakis said: “this guy’s going a bit fast, he’s gone crazy”, to which Button replied: “Oh it’s nothing”,.
As the bus approached the roundabout, Button said:, “This next part’s going to be fun”, and accelerated.
That is when Mr Junkeer said to his wife, “He’s coming in hot”, and Ms Junkeer replied, “He’s going too fast”.
Megan Hooper told her partner Dylan Burns: “I’m scared”, and Mr Burns held her down on his lap.
As the bus travelled too quickly through the roundabout, Mr Junkeer said “mate” and Mr Burns said, “slow down”.
“I vividly remember the bus rolling as we drove around the roundabout, instinctively putting my arm across to the seat opposite of me, trying to brace myself,” Brandon Stafford, who was sitting two seats behind Button, told the court.
Directly behind him was Luke Warren, who would tell the court: “When on the bus I vividly remember sitting next to Jack [Ellis] saying ‘ah shit’ as we approached the roundabout at speed, before flying across the bus.’’
His mother, Jenny Warren, who was seated with her husband Greg two rows behind Darcy Bulman, recalled Button “driving recklessly and going too fast, choosing to ignore the yelling and pleading of the passengers asking him to slow down”.
Directly behind her, also on the window seat, was Emma Healey.
She would survive with injuries including a brain bleed, severe cuts to her face, two breaks to her nose and multiple fractures to her lower left arm and hand.
“My husband Laurie was sitting next to me,” she told the court.
“I remember the bus tipping to such an extent that I knew we were going to topple and then my world went black.”
Sharyn Junkeer said she could only put together what she thought happened after her window smashed as it thundered into the roadway.
“As I have no memory of the moments after impact, I can only assume based on the nature of my injuries, that my left hip hit the road and skidded along, propelled by the momentum the bus was continuing to move at,” she told the court.
“The impact resulted in multiple fractures to my pelvis and lower back.
“A large section of my left thigh/hip and buttock was seriously damaged and removed as I skidded along the bitumen, much like a cheese grater.
“I feel that my surviving this tragic event is nothing short of a miracle.”
Her husband Jason, who was knocked out before finding himself still in the bus and covered in glass, metal and debris, had a mixed feeling of “shock, confusion, pain and relief that I was in fact awake”.
“Not able to process much at all and overwhelmed I just thought – find Sharyn and get out now,” he recalled.
“To this day – and something I will never forget – is the debilitating horror and the gripping moment I finally found Sharyn, lying face down and lifeless.
“I didn’t think she was alive and was hit with another wave of emotion – but just noticed a slight movement in her arm.”
He told the court he was struggling to process the scene, and continued to fade in and out of consciousness.
But he had to find his wife again while helping others.
“I came to again – and this time I couldn’t see Sharyn – I had to get out and find her,” he said.
“I was rescued from the emergency exit thanks to [a survivor] screaming out “if you can walk come to me”.
Emma Healey’s distressed statement also included how her badly injured husband, Laurie, dramatically tried to get her to safety.
“When my husband regained consciousness after the accident, he saw that I was covered in blood from my injuries and he initially thought I was dead,” she said.
“My husband had to drag my unconscious body out of the bus, through the window and onto the edge of the steep cliff-like embankment before then lifting my body over the safety barrier away from the bus.”
And Jenny Warren recalled coming to and seeing her son “looking down at me as I lay on the road pleading with me to stay awake, worried I think, that I wasn’t going to survive”.
“I then remember seeing my husband once I had been placed on a stretcher, his face and neck covered in blood,” she said.
“He assured me he was okay but the worried and distressed look on his and my son’s face is an image I can’t get out of my head.”
Luke Warren also recalled the moment, telling the court that the vision of his mother “millimetres from potentially dying” still haunted him.
“When I got up, I just saw horrific thing after horrific thing that will be with me the rest of my life,” Luke said.
“The next moments were heartbreaking, chaotic and terrifying.
“As I tried to help as many people I could get out of the bus and keep them conscious.”
He also couldn’t find his father and feared he had died.
“My son, who was on the bus did not know if his father (me) was dead or alive as I was knocked out and not taken off the bus for a long time,” Greg Warren said in his victim impact statement.
“In the pitch black of night, he was asking people “has anyone seen my dad”.
“This breaks my heart and I still worry about the anguish and long-term impact on him.”
Judge Roy Ellis sentenced Button to a maximum 32 years in jail with a non-parole period of 24 years.
On Friday lawyers representing him filed an appeal which will be heard at a later date in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal.
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