Baby miraculously escapes fatal car crash in Balliang East
The family of a new mum killed in a freak road accident say “all [they] have is tears” following the tragic crash in Victoria’s west. Her baby son, who was also in the car, has miraculously survived the incident.
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A new mother killed in a freak crash had been on her way home with her baby son after attending a funeral.
Sarah Tonkin, 37, died when a 10kg tow bar was flicked up by a passing truck’s tyres into her path, west of Melbourne on Friday afternoon.
Her Hyundai sedan, carrying her eight-month-old son, Austin, then veered off the Geelong-Bacchus Marsh Rd at Balliang East, and rolled on to its side crashing into a tree.
Austin survived and was yesterday discharged from the Royal Children’s Hospital back into the arms of his father, Gregor Jeffery.
The young family is from Torquay on Victoria’s Surf Coast.
Ms Tonkin had been returning home from her elderly aunt’s funeral, which she attended with her parents in Macedon.
Her parents Richard and Pauline Tonkin told the Sunday Herald Sun they had not stopped crying for 24 hours.
“All we have is tears,” Mr Tonkin said. “Sarah was the most beautiful daughter.
“She was one of those people when they went into a room, the room just lit up.”
Mr Tonkin believed he was the last person to see his daughter alive, having said goodbye to her after the funeral.
“They decided to not come to the cemetery,” he said.
“I kissed both her and Austin goodbye, then this dreadful, terrible thing happens.
“It’s so hard to imagine that if she was one second earlier or later she would be still with us.”
A woman has been killed, and a baby boy injured, in a freak road accident at Balliang East near Bacchus Marsh. https://t.co/5zYfOfohG3 @MelinaSarris7 #7NEWS pic.twitter.com/LDXqCWL5Bb
— 7NEWS Melbourne (@7NewsMelbourne) December 13, 2019
Sarah and Gregor married in May 2014 and after many years of trying to conceive, were “over the moon” to welcome Austin in April this year.
“He completed their family,” Mr Tonkin said. “Their lives were really just beginning.”
Ms Tonkin’s older sister, Karen Heffernan, from Brisbane, said her two teenage children loved their “fun” aunt. She said they had planned to come next week to have a big family Christmas together.
“This is just devastating,” she said. “My husband calls it the lightning strike. The chances of this happening are just so low.
“She is going to be dearly missed. She was always thinking of her friends — was very family orientated.” Investigators have described Ms Tonkin’s death as a “freak” accident where she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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A B-double truck had ran over the large metal pintle hook on the road, picking it up in its tyres and flinging it into her car’s path.
Police hope to track down the truck driver and the owner of the vehicle that lost its tow bar.
But Detective Acting Sgt Philip Frith, from the Major Collision Investigation Unit, said it was purely to have a better understanding how the tragedy happened.
“We’re not looking at them for any criminal offences,” Det Sgt Frith said.
“It’s more to have a proper understanding of what happened in this collision.”