Precious cargo

I recently retired from 33 years active service as a Police Officer in two states, Victoria and Queensland. This story is long in the telling but I hope that you will keep reading. It is an old story, a genuine one. I know because I lived it. It happened in Victoria but the story is as applicable here as anywhere else.

I was a Sergeant and I received an order to go back to Police HQ to see my boss. This usually means that you are in some kind of strife. Not this time. The boss was looking for someone with experience to do a difficult job –  deliver a Death Message. It is normally handled by the guys and girls on the car crew. The minute I was told what I had to do I understood the reason for the recall. I left HQ and went to the man’s place of employment, where I was met by his boss and the organisation's priest; I won’t say who he worked for to protect his privacy. Suffice to say that the people he worked for were brilliant in their support and assistance to him.

There I informed him that his wife, his two children, his mother, his father and his sister had all been killed in a road accident on a highway out of Melbourne. They had been going out for the day, the driver had lost control of the vehicle for some reason, the reason has never been established but it may have been the rain and a puddle on the road, excessive speed and inexperience may have also been a factor. The car hit a concrete pylon adjacent to an off ramp, all six people in the car were killed either immediately at the scene or later died in the ambulances on the way to or at the hospital. I had informed him but it wasn't as simple as that. I was not able to just say it one after the other. I had to stop and pause for a short time between each one. I had to be sure that the message had been passed to him, that he understood what he was being told.

To watch that man get beaten down, almost physically, literally, with every new piece of information he was given will haunt me until the day I die. I stayed with him and with his workmates and priest until he was able to comprehend what had been told to him. I gave him all the details I could and the number of a station in country Victoria where he could contact the attending officers and speak to them. For this man, quite literally, his entire family had been wiped out that day. I was there for a number of hours and finally had to go because it wasn't my place to be there, he had workmates and others to be with him.

I'd give anything to hear her voice one more time

Another life lost to speed