Mum’s five-hour torture after Snapchat message: ‘He looked alive’

For five excruciating hours Pennie Randall stood in the dark as the rain fell, fearing the worst. She wasn’t ready for what happened next.

EXCLUSIVE

For five excruciating hours Pennie Randall stood in the dark as the rain fell, waiting for emergency crews to crunch open the wreckage she desperately hoped did not hold the body of her only son.

Chatter was swirling among local teenagers and news was spreading like wildfire on Snapchat that 17-year-old Addison Bhimjiani was in the Nissan 200SX with two others that had slammed into a power pole in Sydney’s west.

Ms Randall had to see for herself. She refused to believe her son was gone until she knew for sure.

“I got a call from my daughter who was at a friend’s sleepover that night …. She’d heard that Addison has been hurt and that it was really bad and I needed to get there. Friends were talking about it on social media,” Ms Rabdall recalls of the hellish night of January 15 2024.

“I grabbed the Medicare card, private health insurance, I thought ‘we are going to need this’ and off I went.”

But there would be no hospital.

Pennie Randall, the mother of 17yo boy Addison Bhimjiani, has spoken out for the first time about her anguish.

“The road was blocked off a fair distance away from the crash site. They were unable to tell me if my son was in the car … and I stood there five and a half hours watching them do camera flashes, the white overalled forensic guys doing their heat readings with the big long poles to gather the speed at which the car was going.

“I was standing there for five hours then towards the end I could hear them crunching open the car with the jaws of life, that’s when I snuck through. I could see my son being carried out of the car.

“He looked alive, his eyes were open. They couldn’t confirm it. My brother took me back to the place that I was standing. It felt like forever but probably was a couple minutes later that they came over and confirmed it.”

“Then I stayed there until he was zipped up in a black bag and taken away. I went to pick up my daughter, we came home and sat on the couch. She said ‘what’s wrong is Addison in hospital? And that’s when I told her he had been killed.

“It had always been just the three of us and I had to say to her ‘it’s just the two of us now.”

Ms Randall is sharing her agony to urge young motorists and their parents to take driver safety seriously.

She is calling for tougher penalties for young drivers who speed and use cars as a weapon.

Addison Bhimjiani, 16 who died in a car accident at McGraths Hill on January 15, 2024.. Photo: Supplied

“Too often young kids are out in cars, speeding, not giving a thought for what could go wrong. Well I’m living proof that lives are destroyed forever. We have a life sentence,” she said.

“The justice system needs to treat victims with the same respect they treat the people who commit these crimes. Sentences need to be tougher, laws need to be tougher.”

Ms Randall is joining the Road Trauma Support Group NSW (RTSG) push for the state and federal governments to implement urgent reforms to confront the rising national road toll.

After decades of progress, Australia’s road death toll has increased every year since 2020 – this is the first time there has been a rise since 1970.

From 2020 to 2023, fatalities rose by more than 15 per cent.

In New South Wales alone, road deaths spiked by 25 per cent between 2022 and 2023. In

2024, the figures plateaued, but 2025 is already tracking worse.

Scene of the fatal car crash. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Max Mason-Hubers

Notes and flowers at the scene. Picture by Max Mason-Hubers

“We lose around 1200 people every single year on Australian roads. That’s thousands of

preventable deaths and tens of thousands of lives changed forever,” said RTSG spokesman Duncan Wakes-Miller.

“We stand at memorials; we bow our heads at Road Safety Week ceremonies and then we go another year with no real change,” Mr Wakes-Miller said.

“What we need now is not more awareness campaigns, we need reform. We need laws with teeth. We need courts that deliver justice and deterrence. And we need to

recognise road crime for what it is — a criminal act with devastating consequences.”

Originally published as Mum’s five-hour torture after Snapchat message: ‘He looked alive’