Angela Marmont speaks out on her brother’s death as deadly December road toll puts safety in focus
The sister of Geelong hit-run victim James Travers has described the horrible other-wordly experience of learning her brother had been killed in a road accident, issuing an impassioned plea for drivers.
Geelong
Don't miss out on the headlines from Geelong. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Angela Marmont recalls being immersed in a sense of silent chaos when the police on her doorstep told her James Travers, her brother, had been hit by a car and killed.
She’d kept her composure, being 36-weeks pregnant and conscious of the “overdrive state of shock” threatening to overcome her, but the internal tempest was deafening.
Angela’s moment of quiet mayhem came in the early hours of December 22, 2018, shortly after the police had knocked on her door.
“I opened it and they introduced themselves, and I just said ‘is it my mum or dad?’, and they said ‘no’, and I said ‘has something happened to James?’, they said ‘yes, and I said ‘is he alive?’, and they said ‘no’,” Angela recalled, sitting in her Grovedale living room ahead of the three-year anniversary of her brother’s death.
“From the moment I received that information that James had died, my life instantly changed. It’s a shift that is hard to describe – it’s like silence and chaos at the same time, and you just know your whole world has stopped and you’ve moved into another one.
“It’s a scary feeling, you don’t know what’s happening.
“I think that silence and chaos concept is the best way to describe it, because everything just goes quiet, but there’s this whole chaotic mayhem in your mind. It’s a bizarre feeling that you just enter this other world.”
James Travers was a 32-year-old chippy with a seemingly permanent smile painted on his face when he was hit by a van while crossing Yarra St in South Geelong. It was about 3am and he was heading home after enjoying a Christmas break-up party, like so many other revellers do each year.
The driver who struck him, Jamie Neskovski, didn’t stop. He did return two minutes later, before again departing without offering assistance to the young carpenter, who lay dying on the cold bitumen.
A court would later hear evidence James had remained alive almost 15 minutes after being hit, with a faint pulse evident to the passers-by who discovered him. But James could not be saved.
Neskovski was jailed for a maximum of three years in July after a jury found him guilty of failing to stop and failing to render assistance – a sentence Angela described at the time as being incomparable to the theft of James’ future.
There’s no absolute end point when it comes to dealing with grief. Many learn to cope with it, but a feeling of loss can be permanent. For Angela, and James’ vast network of friends and family, the ripple effects of road trauma endure.
“The trauma impact in the early days, as opposed to how it is now, is you just become a bit detached and you’re lost for a long time,” Angela says. “My family was able to physically be together, but everyone was so broken. There was such a sense of helplessness – for James and for each other.”
“You’re just so powerless to change it. Mostly in life we have choices and control over things, but there was just nothing we could do about bringing James back.
“Significant days are still celebrated in our family, but there’s always a huge noticeable missing piece, like that feeling when you’re waiting for the last person to arrive at a family dinner – but they just never come.”
James is just one of the 14 December fatalities recorded on Geelong roads over the past decade – in what has become our deadliest month for road users.
With post-lockdown holiday traffic expected to surge in the region, James Travers’ family have a simple message for road users this holiday period: be safe and look out for one another.
“Vehicles on the road are so powerful and they are capable of so much damage, that we are so vulnerable and at risk,” Angela says.
“As soon as your put yourself out there [on the roads] it’s like – and I know this might be a silly comparison – but it’s like when you go swimming in the ocean and you enter the sharks’ world, where they’re at the top … They’re these bigger, stronger things out there that are not thinking all the time about the other aspects of people.”
“No one is exempt on our roads, even if you know you’re doing the right thing, unfortunately you can’t trust that every other person is.
“If you are involved in an accident please stop and help, because you could save a person’s life … It is as simple as that sometimes. If a person had stopped and helped, James might still be alive.”
More Coverage
Originally published as Angela Marmont speaks out on her brother’s death as deadly December road toll puts safety in focus
Men allegedly try to lure girls into car in Barwon Heads
A group of men allegedly tried to lure two young girls into their car in Barwon Heads on Sunday, offering them lollipops and asking for their phone numbers.
Cut 200-game Saint opens up on ‘abrupt’ end as AFL fire still burns
Seb Ross was under no illusions that he was in trouble, but the end still came quick. The former Saint reflects on how it unfolded, his time at the club and what’s next — on and off the field.