Hell on road toll front line
Christmas Day crash heartache
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’,” the 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 Queensland 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 erratically and at high speeds when his BMW crossed to the wrong side of Manly Rd in Manly West and hit the Trittons head-on. Court hearings have since heard Veneris had a blood alcohol reading of .019, as well as 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.
“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 and there’s nothing more we can do. It tears you up.”
Ms Cowley said she constantly dealt with the frustrating of attending completely avoidable crashes.
“And all because you wanted to answer that call, or get somewhere a minute or two faster. It’s just not worth it.”