Eastern Freeway: The curse of fate that led to a drug-fuelled truck driver killing four police officers

A series of disastrous decisions ended in tragedy. This is how the various events unfolded in the lead-up to the deadly Eastern Freeway crash.

Mohinder Singh arrives at the Victorian Supreme Court.

The sequence of events ended with catastrophic consequences on the Eastern Freeway.

Four police officers, responding to a speeding Porsche driver, were killed when a semi trailer slammed into them.

The truck driver and Porsche driver both survived.

The horror crash on April 22 last year was Victoria’s worst loss of police lives in a single incident.

Detectives were left with the grim task of piecing together the details of what happened to their colleagues.

Almost a year on from the senseless tragedy, it is still hard to get a sense of how many dominoes lined up to cause such a terrible outcome on that dark afternoon.

Leading Sen-Constable Lynette Taylor, Sen-Constable Kevin King, Constable Glen Humphris and Constable Josh Prestney were killed because they were on the scene at that exact moment.

Constable Glen Humphris and Senior Constable Kevin King.

Leading Senior Constable Lynette Taylor and Constable Josh Prestney.

There are countless ‘what if?’ questions of how things may have panned out differently.

A twist of grave misfortune meant that shortly after pulling over Porsche driver Richard Pusey, truck driver Mohinder Singh was swerving along the same stretch of freeway before veering into their path.

Truck driver Mohinder Singh.

Porsche driver Richard Pusey.

Singh, 48, has pleaded guilty to four counts of culpable driving causing the deaths of the four police officers.

The father-of-two from Cranbourne was high on drugs at the time and severely impaired by fatigue, having only slept five hours in the 72 hours before the crash, according to witness testimony.

He had been using and dealing drugs in the days prior and an hour before the crash had raised concerns with his boss that he wasn’t in a fit state to work.

But he drove on, leaving the Connect Logistics depot in Lyndhurst at 4.58pm to deliver chicken to Thomastown, stopping off briefly on the way to carry out another drug deal.

A mural dedicated to the four Victorian police officers who were killed.

Flinders Street Station was lit up blue as a tribute.

Across town, millionaire mortgage broker Richard Pusey had left his plush pad in Fitzroy and was racing around in his Porsche 911.

At 4.30pm he was clocked doing 149km/h on the Eastern Freeway, triggering the initial police response.

He was pulled over and interviewed but at the moment of the crash he was off to the side of the road urinating.

In the aftermath, he pulled two phones from his wrecked Porsche, filmed dead and dying police officers and commented “that is f---ing justice”.

Shane Patton lays a tribute at Boroondara Police Station in Kew near the scene of the crash.

He then fled the scene before handing himself in to police the following morning.

The 42-year-old has since pleaded guilty to outraging public decency, a charge which had not been used in Australia for 100 years.

As crown prosecutor Robyn Harper pointed out in one of Pusey’s hearings, it was “owing to the presence of his motor vehicle that an accident has occurred”.

Without Pusey, it was argued, the carnage that unfolded would never have happened.

Without many of the arbitrary factors that combined in quick succession on the side of the freeway, things would have turned out very differently.

Both Pusey and Singh made disastrous decisions behind the wheel.

When their paths crossed for the first time by the side of the freeway, four police officers’ lives came to an end.

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