Shortly before 2pm Glen Humphris sent a photo to partner Todd Robinson.

The young constable — just six weeks into the job — was taking a break from duties on the Mornington Peninsula and didn’t want his partner of four years to miss out on the beach view.

By 5.15pm Todd asked if Glen and patrol buddy Leading Senior Constable Lynette Taylor were heading back to their Brunswick base.

They were due to finish at 7pm.

It was the first in what became a flurry of messages that Glen, 32, never lived to read.

Each message slightly more frantic than the last as news of an incomprehensible tragedy unfolded.

“Because of his professional nature he would have his phone with him but wouldn’t respond unless he was able to,’’ Todd said.

“I was at home. I was actually starting to cook dinner for us.

“Then at 6.30pm my sister in Brisbane rang and said: ‘Oh have you heard the news. Is Glen alright?’

“I said: ‘What do you mean?’ And that is when she mentioned the accident.

“I texted him and asked him: ‘Can you text me? There’s been a crash’.

“He’d already been gone an hour.”

Todd’s phone showed the message was sent, but never received.

Two more would follow, the first asking Glen to look at his phone.

Then just after 8pm a desperate plea: “Glen”.

“There was still nothing,’’ Todd said.

Todd put the TV on, recognising the white police SUV Glen and Lynette had been travelling in that day.

He’d caught a glimpse of it in the beachside photo Glen sent hours earlier.

“I saw the white SUV and because he wasn’t responding — I knew something was wrong,’’ Todd said.

“The longer it went on the more I knew.

“So I knew out of however many police there are it would be him.

“I think just after 9pm I was upset and crying. Then they knocked on the door. It was them.

“As soon as I opened the door all I can remember is just saying: ‘No’ over and over because I knew.”

‘ALTHOUGH HE DID DIE YOUNG, HE DIED HAPPY’

Todd gently kisses a tiny canister attached to a neck chain.

Inside are the ashes of his soulmate.

The chain also carries a small metal tag bearing Glen’s police registration number and Todd’s defence number — he is a warrant officer in the army.

On the other side is Glen’s birth date. And April 22, 2020. The day he died.

At the couple’s city apartment dozens of photos, a reminder of their many weekend adventures, and dreams, fill book shelves, side tables and walls.

In another, sits a screenshot of those final text messages.

“Every weekend we were out doing something. We didn’t sit around. We lived life to the fullest,’’ Todd said.

“It grounds me a bit to know that although he did die young he died happy, content. He had a full life. He didn’t waste it. As far as he knows he’s out there still having a good time.

“All those photos. That’s him still. He died happy. He died doing his job.”

In a shoebox, Todd looks through belongings from Glen’s police locker.

Neatly stacked in the corner are dozens of messages handwritten on squares of notepad paper, each meticulously dated in the top right hand corner. Todd has written each when he’s thinking of Glen. It’s his way of speaking to him, just as they had through notes left on the kitchen counter before the crash.

“Come back to me. I miss you so much. I’ve been looking for you everywhere and I can’t find you,’’ one dated May 21 reads.

Earlier that day at 2am, a week after returning from Glen’s Newcastle funeral, Todd had been wandering the city streets for hours, eventually finding himself at the Victoria Police Memorial on St Kilda Road at 4am.

“I went walking around the streets where Glen and I had been, to the restaurants and Hardware Lane,” Todd said.

“I ended up at the police memorial at four in the morning.

“It was a therapeutic type thing. It was calming for me to wander the streets. Everywhere I walk I see him. I see him everywhere.

“He used to say to me he never wanted to lose me. That was it. We were happy with what we were doing.”

Todd, 50, struggled in the weeks after the tragedy with his youngest son flying from Newcastle to be at his side.

The coronavirus lockdown has been a blessing, for now, because the bars and restaurants the couple used to visit in their neighbourhood are quiet, and working from home avoided the ordeal of returning to an empty house.

“It wasn’t going to work. It was actually the thought of coming home to nothing,’’ Todd said.

“I often walk around and see couples and think: ‘That’s not us any more’.

“I think the masks were really good because I would walk around talking to him. The first six or so weeks I’d forget and I’d be just walking around crying. When the masks came in it was good. I didn’t look as stupid.”

‘HE FOUND THAT FRIENDSHIP AND TEAMWORK WITH (THE POLICE)’

At the end of 2018, Todd posted photos of his and Glen’s year to social media.

“Love this guy so much,’’ he wrote.

“Some ask why and I can say: He makes me laugh, smile and look no more. I’ve found a soul mate.”

Their relationship began on December 30, 2015 with a bike ride. Todd, stationed with the army at Newcastle and Glen, born in Gosford, working as an exercise physiologist on the NSW Central Coast.

“I was lucky he stayed because I was 20 minutes late,’’ Todd said.

“It was on an old railway corridor they converted to a bike track. It was a 30km track.

“But I’d actually ridden my bike from home which was already a 20 minute ride to get to where he was.

“We just chatted the whole way there and back.”
The couple moved to Melbourne two years ago when Todd was posted south for work.

“We used to walk the streets and say — we can’t believe we’re living here,’’ Todd said.

“Every day was like the first day we met. It wasn’t an effort. If he came home I would actually get up and greet him.

“It was just natural.”

Glen, who got a job as a carpenter on leaving school before studying sports science, gained employment at a legal firm in Melbourne helping injured people return to work.

When Victoria Police launched a massive recruitment drive he applied.

“He wanted the teamwork and mateship he could see that I had with the defence,’’ Todd said.

“He did try the defence but he had open heart surgery when he was three days old. It was life and death back then as well for him. His life span then was only a few days.

“He sat here and he filled out his application.

“He was pretty excited. He had to have everything perfect and sent it off and got it back well within the time frame.

“He said: Here he can help. He was there to help people that were in trouble.

“I could see every day he loved going to work and he’d sit here at night on WhatsApp talking to his squadmates about different exams and what they had to do.

“He found that friendship and teamwork with them.

“He found his niche. We found each other. We didn’t want for anything more. That was it.”

Glen graduated on March 12, surrounded by his family at the Victoria Police Academy in Glen Waverley — the venue for his funeral just seven weeks later.

“They had them out the front on the stage at graduation. And basically where he was sitting is where they put his casket,’’ Todd said.

‘I NEVER REALLY TALK ABOUT THE DRIVERS, I DON’T WANT TO WASTE MY ENERGY ON THEM’

For 13 ½ hours, nearly 1000km, Todd, escorted the hearse carrying Glen’s body home to NSW.

Through his army training he knew it needed to be done.

Police lined the roadside and saluted. When the cortege stopped at a service station outside Melbourne, strangers came out and stood in silence as a mark of respect. Across the border, in darkness, hundreds of NSW police and members of the public formed an honour guard along a 5km stretch of road into Newcastle, lighting the night with red and blue.

“They saluted as we went past, they stopped up on the overpasses,’’ Todd said.

“It was heart-wrenching.

“The outpouring that has come from this incident actually shows how supportive the community is of the police.

“Underneath the uniform is a person.”

Todd had earlier placed a photo in Glen’s casket of the couple tackling a zip line course - replacing it with a single red rose laid across his heart upon reaching Newcastle.

Scrawled on the back of the photo was a note.

“Our adventures may have stopped and my heart will remain broken until we meet again as you are the only one to mend my heart.

“You live on in my heart and mind as you remain forever young. Fly free stay safe until we meet again. Love Todd.”

Todd has no time for bitterness over the crash.

“I never really talk about the drivers. That’s for the police to deal with. I don’t want to waste any energy on them. I’m not an eye for an eye type person,’’ he said.

“It’s not going to change anything for me.

“It’s not about me now. It’s about Glen and keeping him alive in memory.

“The thing I’m working through — if I’m out walking the dog — is trucks coming past.

“Every time I see a truck or the speed of a truck I just picture him in front of it.”

The kindness of strangers, some who have recognised Todd on the street from the TV, has been humbling.

One man, aged 79, posted a letter about how his boyfriend was killed in a car accident in his 20s but he never went to the funeral for fear of revealing he was gay.

A local shop owner put his hands in the air, as if an act of disbelief, while the barista at the cafe broke down, making Glen’s usual coffee, for Todd.

Shortly before his death, Glen and Todd had been musing about life on one of their usual walks.

“I remember walking along — we were just talking about things. And I just said to him one day: ‘Oh well anyway, you won’t know when you die’.

“He had that philosophy — live life to the fullest. And I was the same with that.

“Live your life — you never know when.”

‘WE COULD NOT BE MORE PROUD OF GLEN AS A MAN’

Glen Humphris’ father has told of his pride at seeing his son graduate as a police officer.

Mark Humphris told the Sunday Herald Sun: “It was a happy and inspirational day.”

“We could not have been more proud of Glen as a man and for all of his achievements,’’ he said.

“We were all devastated just over a month later to learn that Glen had lost his life along with three of his workmates while on duty.

“We are all heartbroken and grieving at his loss but we are saddest for Glen himself as we are sure he had future hopes, dreams and ambitions ahead of him, both personally and professionally, but these will never be realised due to this tragic event.

Glen deserved to live a long and happy life and it is hard to believe that he has gone and that we will never see his beautiful smiling face again.”

The family thanked the Victoria Police and NSW Police and the community for their support during their “terrible time”.

“The care and respect shown to Glen and his family has been outstanding,’’ Mark Humphris said.

“Rest in Peace Glen, we all love you forever.”

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The names of the four police officers killed in the Eastern Freeway tragedy will on Tuesday be officially added to the Victoria Police Memorial.