12yo dies in crash of car with seven kids aboard

A 12-year-old girl from a remote Aboriginal community has been killed while riding in a car with six other children near Fitzroy Crossing in WA’s Kimberley.

A 12-year-old girl from a remote Aboriginal community has been killed while riding in a car with six other children near Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia’s far north Kimberley.

There were seven children aged 12 to 16 in the gold Nissan X-Trail – no adults were on board – when the vehicle turned off the Great Northern Highway onto a sandy track and rolled about 9.55pm on Sunday, according to police.

Four of the children were taken to hospital, where they were treated for injuries not believed to be life-threatening.

Fitzroy Crossing, population 1300, is on Bunuba country about four hours drive from Broome. It is in the Fitzroy Valley, a health and service hub for surrounding remote communities and pastoral stations. At the 2016 Census, 61.5 per cent of Fitzroy Crossing residents were Indigenous.

In 2015, an 11-year-old girl died when a car carrying seven children and no adults rolled at Fitzroy Crossing. Police alleged a 15-year-old boy was the driver.

In Fitzroy Crossing in 2019, police charged a 13-year-old boy over the crash of a stolen car that left seven children injured.

Kimberley MP Divinna D’Anna, a Yawuru woman from Broome, said she was devastated by the latest tragedy. Her thoughts were “with the young person’s family and the whole Fitzroy Valley community”.

Bunuba woman June Oscar, now the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, led a landmark study that in 2015 found the nation’s highest rates of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder among children in the Fitzroy Valley.