Jacqueline Vodden: Police officer justifies chase leading to fatal Western Freeway crash

A Coroners Court has heard the audio in the lead up to the fatal police crash near Ballarat which killed a 16-year-old girl.

The remains of the van after a crash on the Western Freeway. Picture: Channel 9

A police officer maintains chasing a stolen vehicle which crashed, killing a teenage passenger near Ballarat, was the right call given the “high-volume” crimes the vehicle was involved in.

Jacqueline Vodden, 16, died when a stolen van driven by a 17-year-old crime suspect ploughed into two trucks on the Western Freeway near Ballarat in September 2017.

Senior constable Rory Meddick, who was the passenger in the police vehicle that chased the van before the fatal crash, gave evidence to the Coroners Court on the second day of an inquest into the teenager’s death.

Jacqueline Vodden, 16, who was killed in the crash. Photo: Facebook

He was asked whether, in his view, police made the appropriate decisions that day.

The court heard Mr Meddick’s unmarked police car began tailing the HiAce van at the intersection of Geelong-Ballan Road and Old Melbourne Road when it made an improper right-hand turn there and headed towards Ballan.

The van was known to police, the model and licence plate linking it to a stolen vehicle involved in aggravated burglaries, including one earlier that day.

To begin with, Mr Meddick did not know the identity of the van’s driver.

“All of Mr Cairns and his associates wear the same clothes; they usually wear the same caps, same jackets … we were uncertain whether it was him or not.”

The van avoided an attempted interception by Meddick’s vehicle and continued into Ballan, making several circuits of the town with police in pursuit.

The intersection where in 2017 police began following the stolen van that later crashed on the Western Freeway. Photo: Google Maps

Except for one instance of the van going the wrong way around a roundabout, Mr Meddick considered the 17-year-old’s driving to be insufficiently dangerous to call off the chase.

“The justification,” he said, “was that this stolen van containing two people who were conducting high-volume crimes …. were a serious risk to the health and safety of the person, because in my opinion they were going to continue conducting these if we didn’t stop them.”

Mr Meddick gave the pursuit controller updates as his car and the van ended up back on Geelong-Ballan Road, driving north and onto the Western Freeway leading to Ballarat.

Soon after, the van tried to overtake a truck using the emergency lane: at 2.19pm, Meddick was heard on the radio, saying, “He’s collided with a truck”.

The senior constable said there were a number of matters about which he should have been more explicit with the pursuit controller, particularly the initial reason for chasing the van – namely, its involvement in aggravated burglaries.

At the time, Mr Meddick told the controller the chase began because of the van’s dangerous driving.

“I was maintaining constant risk assessment as we’re driving along,” he told the court.

“I’m trying to communicate via the radio, trying to listen to the radio as well. I’m also trying to give directions … I had a few tasks on my plate at once.

“In hindsight, I agree that there could have been some more things conveyed to the pursuit controller, but at the time I thought that I was conveying those matters to the pursuit controller to give him a full view of what we were looking at.”

Jacqueline Vodden died when the van ploughed into two trucks.

Nevertheless, Mr Meddick stood by the decisions made four and a half years ago: he judged the risk of pursuit to be less severe than that posed to the public by the freedom of the driver’s occupants, given his knowledge of the van’s involvement in crime.

Mr Meddick told the court the van driver, whose identity became known once he fled the crashed car, was a priority for arrest.

It was said the boy, part of “a group of local ballarat youths who are recidivist offenders” stole another car after running from the crash and was eventually arrested hiding in a shed in Wendouree.

He afterwards faced an out-of-sessions court hearing, where he was charged with culpable driving, dangerous driving causing death, conduct endangering life, theft of motor vehicle, aggravated burglary, burglary and other offences.

“If we knew it was him,” Mr Meddick said, “the pursuit would not have happened, because it gives us further avenues of enquiry to try and effect an arrest at another time.”