A crucial witness allegedly heard Akon Guode admit to killing her children
A WOMAN who allegedly heard a mother admit she caused the deaths of three children is under pressure not to give evidence.
A WOMAN who allegedly heard a mother admit she caused the deaths of her three children by driving into a suburban Melbourne lake is under pressure not to give evidence.
Akon Guode, 37, is accused of murdering her one-year-old son, four-year-old twins and attempting to murder her six-year-old daughter who survived when her car crashed into a Wyndham Vale lake in April last year.
A witness has come forward with information about Guode’s alleged motive but is under pressure from the Sudanese community not to give evidence, the Melbourne Magistrates Court heard on Tuesday.
Earlier this month a collision investigator told the court he believed the car was deliberately driven into the lake.
Victoria Police collision investigator and civil engineer Detective Senior Constable Robert Hay examined the scene of the crash and conducted several re-enactments with a similar vehicle. “From the drive-throughs of the collision scene, it is my opinion that the car could not and did not just drift off the roadway,” he said in a report tendered to Guode’s committal hearing.
He also said the tests demonstrated a driver would have to turn the steering wheel three times to get to the lake’s ballast area on the banks of Manor Lakes from the road next to it.
“During the drive-through it was demonstrated that there would be three turns of the steering wheel to get to the ballast area,” Sen-Constable Hay wrote.
He says his analysis of the scene shows Guode’s car veered off Manor Lakes Boulevard, passed between trees planted on the grass reserve and continued along the reserve’s concrete walking track.
It then travelled down the bank, striking large rocks, and landed in the lake.