Christmas head- on devastated a family

THE crash scene from Sandra Cowley’s vantage point was a Christmas Day horror: car parts strewn across the road like the aftermath of a bomb blast, crowds of onlookers, and paramedics performing CPR on a young woman.

“I looked at them and thought: this is wrong,” Ms Cowley, a critical- care paramedic with 27 years’ experience, said.

“She shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t have to be doing this to you. You’re too young.

“It was horrific. I don’t think there is any other way of putting it.”

It was Christmas Day, 2017, and Ms Cowley, like so many emergency services workers, was on shift.

As a critical- care paramedic, she attends only high acuity incidents: complex jobs often involving major trauma.

The Tritton family – Laurence and Karin and their daughters Tarmeka, 23, and Makayla, 18 – were on their way to Christmas lunch.

But so too was Mark Jason Veneris, who was allegedly driving his BMW erratically and at high speeds when it crossed onto the wrong side of Manly Rd in Manly West.

Court hearings have since heard Veneris had a blood- alcohol level of .019, and traces of methamphetamine and amphetamine in his system.

This is the crash Ms Cowley won’t forget, the one where she had to tell a young woman they couldn’t save her little sister. That they’d tried as best they could, but there was nothing more they could do.

Tarmeka, 23, had been driving when the BMW hit them head on. In a police witness statement, she described calling out to her dad, who an- swered, then her mother, who mumbled something back, and then her sister, who was silent.

“There comes a point where you just had to say, that’s enough, we can’t do anymore,” she said.

“To be in cardiac arrest from the point on impact – that’s a massive force on the body.”

Ms Cowley had gone to help Makayla first – but everyone involved in that crash needed help. Even Veneris.

Tarmeka, with a broken ankle, fractured ribs and collapsed lung, was taken aside and comforted by bystanders.

“Your emotions don’t come into it. You really just go into job mode. But the young girl in cardiac arrest on Christmas Day, you just think, why are we unwrapping people from cars on Christmas Day?” Ms Cowley said.

“And then saying to the sister, ‘ I’m sorry, we’ve done everything we possibly can. There’s nothing more we can do.’

“It tears you up. We are all human and every one of those jobs stays with you.”

Ms Cowley said she constantly dealt with the frustrating of attending completely avoidable crashes.

“People need to drive carefully. They need to drive responsibly,” she said.

“You don’t want to see me after having an accident. It means you are badly injured. Or that someone has died. And it’s not OK.

“Bodies break and while you might survive, you might also be that severely injured that your life is never the same.

“And all because you wanted to answer that call, or get someone a minute or two faster. It’s just not worth it.”