Peakhurst crash killer told police ‘I think I killed someone’
An unlicensed driver who thought he was a “sick c***” by drunkenly speeding in a stolen car stopped to ask an onlooker for a cigarette as he fled the scene where he’d flipped a 4WD and killed two women.
NSW
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A young unlicensed driver thought he was a “sick c***” by drunkenly speeding in a stolen car, but after realising he’d killed two women in a south Sydney crash he “just legged it.”
Tyron Knodler told police “I think I killed someone” from hospital the night beloved Canterbury Girls High School teacher Gayle Gibson and Gold Coast woman Carol Chambers died, agreed facts state.
“I don’t care if I get locked up for life. I deserve it …. I should suffer,” he said.
The 21-year-old was swigging from a shoplifted bottle of Jim Beam bourbon seconds before flipping a 4WD in Peakhurst earlier this year, and when Knodler’s breath test showed he was three times the legal blood alcohol limit he told officers: “not bad aye, f***. That’s why I crashed I guess.”
The Revesby man will be sentenced in March for a raft of charges including manslaughter, high range drink driving in a stolen car while unlicensed and failing to stop after a car crash causing death.
Mrs Gibson, 62, her husband Tony Giorgio and two friends from Queensland were driving down Henry Lawson Drive around 8pm on March 12 when Tyron Knodler’s stolen Toyota LandCruiser crossed onto the wrong side of the road and ploughed into their Honda Jazz.
Witnesses had seen a driver swerving between lanes at high speed while beeping his horn and “revving uncontrollably” before hearing tyres screeching and what sounded like “an explosion.”
Several first responders discovered Mrs Gibson and 66-year-old Mrs Chambers crushed to death while passenger Kim Alden was hospitalised for a week with a serious head injury, court documents show.
Mrs Gibson’s traumatised husband said he staggered from the wreckage “covered in blood” with cuts all over his body after the car’s windows imploded but his first thought was his wife.
“As soon as I saw her in the back, I knew she was dead,” Mr Giorgio told police.
The distressed man — who taught maths at Knodler’s former high school school in Picnic Point — remembered the offender coming up to him saying, “I’m so sorry mate” before fleeing the scene.
Several onlookers reported a hysterical man slurring his words and shouting “I’ve killed someone … they’re coming for me … I can’t go to jail” while running through the streets near the crash site.
Neighbour Timothy Milner was standing outside his home when a stumbling Knodler approached him screaming, “Do you have a cigarette? I’ve just rolled my car and the police are coming. I’ve got to run!”
Mr Milner called triple-zero and two officers soon found the shirtless man sitting on the ground nearby with his head in his hands, agreed facts show.
Knodler escaped the smash with a broken finger and while at St George Hospital that night the “heavily intoxicated” man, who has never held a drivers licence, repeatedly apologised.
“I was just trying to see a mate and I thought I was a sick c*** and just driving, too much to drink and boom — I just f***ing tipped the car,” Knodler said in a police video.
“I could have and should have been the one f***ed up dead.”
Analysis from a blood test taken at the hospital showed Knodler could have been more than five times the legal alcohol limit.
Earlier that day Knodler had been in tears because of family problems and started drinking alone at a Padstow park before deciding to get behind the wheel because he was “bored”, agreed facts show.
Knodler thought he’d been driving up to 100km/h per hour in a 60km/h zone without headlights on when he lost control, mounted the median strip and hit the oncoming car.
While at Kogarah Police Station later that night Knodler told officers his car slid upside down on its roof in what he described as “f***ing movie s***.”
He climbed out of the car window but said he was too scared to look at his victims so “just legged it.”
“I’m ready to cop life in jail for that,” Knodler told police.
Originally published as Peakhurst crash killer told police ‘I think I killed someone’