Deadline: The mystery of the car crash driver and the missing fingers

A driver pulled from the wreck of a country road smash was missing a couple of fingers — but the mystery deepened when police searched the car.

One theory suggests the man was on the wrong end of a confrontation when they visited a house for some robust debate.

Mark Buttler and Andrew Rule with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt

Digital crime

Distant jungle drums bring talk of a macabre postscript to a very nasty country road smash.

One of those badly injured in the recent multi-vehicle prang was found to have been missing a couple fingers when emergency services arrived.

A search of the car in which he was travelling failed to find the fingers, though he had much bigger injury problems from the heavy impact and remains in bad shape.

One theory doing the rounds is that the victim and a mate had been involved in some kind of confrontation when they visited a house for some robust debate over something that must have been terribly important.

Things did not turn out as expected and someone at the property is said to have used something very sharp to get his message across.

That version has it that the visitors had been speeding to a nearby hospital for treatment of the hand injuries when the accident happened.

Police inquiries are, as they say, continuing.

It isn’t the first report of such behaviour in the area.

Talk is that another local lost a thumb after some unhappiness about his activities.

Prison feud fall guy

Bit of nastiness at one of our main maximum security jails when an inmate was dealt with most savagely by some new enemies.

The victim was recently thrown off a balcony in a common area after tempers boiled over for one reason or another, probably related to drug activity.

Said bloke landed on his feet and suffered some severe ankle injuries but escaped the kind of damage another balcony victim at the same jail suffered a few years back.

He ended up in a wheelchair.

Rats to you, Aussie club mice

The chaps at the Australian Club would not tolerate any dirty, rotten rats in their stately pile in William St — they would simply blackball them or turn them away at the door.

But mice are different, apparently. The club is alive with them.

In the dining room where the great and good have eaten since Queen Victoria’s time, diners pretend not to notice little grey flashes of fur whizzing across the Axminster.

Members are divided on how to handle the problem.

There is, of course, the conventional Ratsak poisoning brigade.

Then there are traditionalists who think there should be a club cat appointed to prowl the place.

And there is even a push for Rule 23 to be relaxed to allow terriers — miniature foxies or Jack Russells — into the club to wage a war to exterminate the rodents.

Rule 23, of course, is the one imposed in the late 1800s to prevent country members bringing their sheep and cattle dogs into the club after a big day selling livestock at Newmarket sale yards.

The Australian Club at 110 William Street, Melbourne.

Danger sign for kids

Few would begrudge a child being given a lollipop?

Unfortunately, lollipop signs are quite another matter and one that is causing some drama lately in a sleepy Gippsland town.

The children involved have got their hands on a stop/slow version and are using it to great effect.

They’ve been taking their fake duties far too seriously and are standing in the middle of the main street on a bend controlling traffic flow, to much concern from locals.

Cops do good in the hood

Those who join the gang crime squad probably expect to be chasing homies on the highways, not dragging them from freezing water.

But seven members of the squad have received commendations for doing just that, saving the lives of two young gangbangers from a lake at Clyde.

The pair — from a notorious southern suburbs crime outfit — might be partial to Ice T but they didn’t fancy the frigid Cascade on Clyde wetlands.

They took the plunge when police saw them returning to an allegedly stolen car last June but quickly came to regret their escape plan.

In heavy rain and gale-force winds, things were really looking grim until the members jumped in and formed some kind of human chain.

The pair were dragged out, one in a semi-conscious state.

Both had hypothermia and, after a thawing-out period, were arrested and charged.

A messy situation

Widespread public sympathy has followed one particular Victorian after a run-in with authorities.

There was a not-so-savoury incident some time back when the same individual reputedly redecorated a police cell in bronze.