Traumatised family recounts Sunbury road rage
DRAMATIC footage has captured the moment a violent alleged drug driver climbed on top of a family car and stomped in the roof outside Sunbury police station. WATCH IT NOW
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DRAMATIC footage has captured the moment a violent alleged drug driver climbed on top of a family car and stomped in the roof outside Sunbury police station.
The horrifying vision shows the man climb out of his ute and forcefully jump onto the car, causing it to cave in on an 11-year-old girl’s head.
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The man can be seen raising his knees to his chest before stomping the roof and climbing down the bonnet.
He then picks up a wooden bollard and yanks open the girls’ car door, poised to hit her.
The girl’s mother and her four-year-old sister were also in the car.
A witness who captured the footage can be heard saying: “Where are the cops? The cops are coming.”
A marked police car can then be seen speeding from the station — located just metres away — to the unfolding attack.
The driver appears to applaud police before being apprehended.
The violent attack ended an alleged terrifying 30-minute road rage ordeal in which the family claims they were chased throughout Sunbury.
The driver, who was released on bail, rammed into the family car, trapping it between his and several security bollards, before carrying out his final violent attack.
The girls’ distraught mother said: “I thought we were done for. I thought he was going to kill us.”
Saturday’s attack came just hours after a truck driver allegedly armed with a hammer and a stick tailgated and then rammed two women in their car on the Tullamarine Freeway.
A 27-year-old man was charged over the incident on Tuesday night.
Assistant Commissioner Doug Fryer said yesterday officers were “deeply concerned” about drivers deliberately using cars as weapons, escalating minor traffic altercations into life-threatening incidents.
“It appears motorists more and more are lacking basic courtesy and respect on the roads, and at times can’t hold their tempers,” he said.
“This never justifies, however … road rage and criminal offending.”
The woman said the 30-minute ordeal began about 11pm, on an outing to buy ice-cream, when a white Ford Ranger Wildtrak ute began to tailgate her Ford XR6 on Gap Rd. She exceeded 100kmh, almost crashing into a car as she fled.
The ute allegedly began ramming her car along Phillip Drive.
“He hit me and our car ended up on the wrong side of the road. I got to the right side of the road and he hit us again,” she told the Herald Sun.
The woman said she dialled triple-0 to say she was driving to the police station for help.
But she said on arrival, the ute rammed her car again, causing it to swing around 180 degrees and take out several wooden bollards.
She said the driver then jumped on the car roof, kicked in the windows, and tore open the front passenger door. Her 11-year-old girl was sitting in the front passenger seat.
“I couldn’t lock the car in time. He opened up the car door with the bollard in his arms. When he was about to hit her, I grabbed her and laid on top of her,” the mum said.
“It was horrific.”
Police came out of the station and made an arrest.
The woman said that in the early stages of the incident she had got out of her car, believing the driver might be thinking she was someone else, but quickly got back in on sensing that he wanted to harm her.
A Sunbury man, 24, was bailed to face Broadmeadows Magistrates’ Court on September 17 on charges of reckless conduct endangering life and drink- and drug-driving.
The mum said she was “petrified” that bail had been granted: “They have let him out on bail and he has his car, and I’m without mine.”
According to a Monash University Accident Research Centre study last year, almost one in five drivers admit having deliberately chased other drivers to intimidate them.
In Victoria, 86 per cent of drivers said they had expressed anger on the road, from honking horns to intimidating and chasing drivers.
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