HIGHWAY TO LIVING HELL
Tegan Mitchell held and sat next to her daughter Olivia for four hours after she was killed in a car crash on the way to a netball carnival.
She still blows a kiss goodnight in her little girl’s room before she goes to bed and is prepared to relive the unimaginable pain until every child is safe on the road.
88 people have died on Queensland roads this year.
Remarkably, that is more than the same time last year.
AS Tegan Mitchell ran towards the horrific car accident involving her young daughter, Olivia, the silence was deafening.
“Running to it I thought she would be fine. I thought she’d have a broken limb, she’d be OK, we’ll just have to go to the hospital. She was always the dramatic one, even if it was a broken limb or leg or something like that I knew we were going to hear about it,” Ms Mitchell said.
“I didn’t hear anything. I look back now and I should have known, it’s because I didn’t hear anything.
“If she was alive still, she would have definitely been screaming, telling everyone.”
Silence. Her family is consumed by it now. Gone is the laughter of a little girl, the music from her room where she danced with her baby sister, the constant chatter. Silenced forever.
It was the worst day of her life – for her family – but Ms Mitchell is talking about it in the hope that today, Fatality Free Friday, drivers think about the risks and consequences of their actions.
THE WORST DAY
IT was a heart-sinking moment, looking over her shoulder and realising the car carrying her daughter, Olivia Douglas, was no longer following them.
The bubbly, full of life and love eight-year-old was travelling with her family from the Gold Coast to a netball carnival in Bundaberg on September 14, 2018, when they pulled over for a break and little Liv asked her mum if she could travel with her friend. Olivia jumped in the car being driven by a former colleague of Ms Mitchell at Oxenford State School.
“We had a stop, did the right thing, pulled over for a break,” Ms Mitchell says. “Olivia asked if she could go in the other car with the coach, ’cause she wanted to watch a movie with her friend.
“I remember having this feeling in my stomach, but I thought ‘no, no, don’t be over protective, she can go, she can have some fun’. She hopped in the vehicle and that was the last time we saw her alive.”
About an hour later, at 1pm, tragedy struck.
“Tim (Olivia’s stepdad) was alerted to it first because he was driving our car in front and they were following behind.
“He said something has happened and I turned and that’s when I realised there was no other car behind us. I was screaming for him to turn the car around.
“We left our son in the car with our one-year-old and asked him to wait there for a minute while we go check if she was OK.
“Tim climbed on to the car and tried to grab Liv. There were 10 to 15 people who had got out of their cars to help. I remember looking over to the man in the other vehicle who was coming in the opposite direction and seeing his car just squashed around his body.
“I remember saying to another lady who stood near me, ‘has someone checked on him, is he OK?’ I still didn’t know at that point that Liv wasn’t. She told me he was already gone.
“I started panicking, we couldn’t get the car door up, so we went to the back of the ute, pulled everything out and went through the back window. She was finally released from her seatbelt and there was a gentleman, I’ve never met him again, but I’m so thankful for what he did. He wasn’t a first responder, he stopped to help.
“He had her in his arms and I could see that she was either really badly injured or that she was gone. He just held her so carefully, as best he could. He wouldn’t let anyone else touch her because he didn’t want any more harm to come to her and he laid her down gently.”
An off-duty nurse and paramedic were on scene and tried to help Olivia.
“They said she didn’t have a pulse. It felt like forever for an ambulance to get there. They kept telling me things like ‘she’s going to be all right, she’s going to go in the helicopter, it’s coming for her’.
“Then they started doing the shocks. They didn’t work, there was no heartbeat. They did the adrenalin into her twice and that didn’t work either. I was on another lady’s phone and I was talking to my mum. I looked over and they pulled a blanket over her head.
“I just fell to the ground. It didn’t feel real, it shouldn’t have been happening.”
Ms Mitchell lay with her daughter on the side of the highway.
“I sat with her for quite some time, I think it was around four hours that we were there.
“The first responders, the police, the fire safety people, everyone that comes, the amount of support they give and what they must see on a daily basis, I couldn’t do it.
“They stood there and held that school tent over her. My family came to the site as well, so they all sat with her too.
Everything else stood still, they sent cars elsewhere so we could be with her and have that time with her.
“We’re forever thankful for what they did that day.
“One of the hardest things at that time was watching two helicopters come, that were for my daughter and instead one of the two people who went in the helicopter was the person who killed her. That was really difficult. It was difficult to drive away.”
THE HOLE THAT’S LEFT
The little girl who brought so much joy to the family is missed terribly by her older brother Noah and her little sister Lexie.
The grief in the eyes of her parents is painfully evident.
“Silence. Liv was a chatterbox, she talked all the time. Moments like that (we miss).
“The silence is different. The little things you miss as a mum
– when I finally went home and did her last load of washing, put her bag away in her room, trying to unpack that. It’s the little things like doing her hair in the morning to get ready for school, the nagging mum things like telling her to do her chores.”
The ripple effect of loss is significant.
“Our son, he wouldn’t even sleep on his own. He slept in our room for months. He suffers, he doesn’t know his place. He can’t go in his bathroom, because that was the one they shared together. They used to come up with games together. You know, all brothers and sisters have their disagreements and they don’t get along at times, but they got along really well.
“They always had the best imaginations, creating ninja warrior courses outside. It was amazing. Even going up to the netball carnival, she took her activewear because she was going to tell Noah how to play netball, because she had been playing for a couple of years.’’
Olivia had even drawn up plans for a home she said she and her friends were going to live in, the kind of dream only a child could imagine.
“She was full of life and full of personality. She was a planner and that’s something we’re thankful for now too,’’ Ms Mitchell said. “She has all these little books and diaries that she had drawn in, her and a couple of her friends were all going to build a house together and all have different jobs, so she had drawn the house and all their bedrooms in it.
“It’s those relationships that are gone, us and our family, but also the friends, they struggle as well. We keep in contact with a lot of the parents and they tell us about their little ones and the struggles they’re going through.”
Trying to explain to a toddler that her sister won’t be coming home is hard for the parents. “We talk about Liv all the time. We have a video of Liv dancing in her room with Lexie, our youngest. She used to love to dance.
“She had a CD player. Whenever Lexie goes into Liv’s room, she goes to the CD player and she points to it and says ‘we need to dance’. I don’t know if that’s her actually remembering it or if she just likes to dance as well.
“I go in and say goodnight to Liv every night. Lexie will come with me and blows her a kiss and says goodnight.
“We always talk about her so she knows, but she always says that when Livie comes over, we’re going to do this or that. That’s the hard thing that we can’t explain to her yet, that she’s not going to come. Liv was over the moon to know that we were having Lexie, she so wanted a sister.”
LIV, LOVE, LAUGH
THE family want to do something to honour Olivia’s memory, to make sure no parent has to suffer such grief.
“One of Olivia’s favourite sayings was Live, Laugh, Love, and we have taken hold of that a little bit. With the ‘live’ part, we took off the ‘e’ and had Liv, because we want people to know her story.
“The ‘laugh’ is the laughter you hear in your children in the back seat or the people who are around and you’d love to keep that happening, to think I’m responsible for these people while I’m on the road.
“Then the ‘love’ of your family and having those memories, let’s make it happy and positive and not have to stop. We took that little saying and use it in a road safety way and hopefully people can take that on board. It’s not just about you, it’s everything around you, the kids in the back seat, the drivers around you, be safe for everyone.”
Ms Mitchell said it is still hard to reconcile with the death of 52-year-old Shane Old, who was killed when the car her daughter was in veered into his path.
Ms Mitchell never saw herself as a campaigner, an activist, but sometimes people are thrust into these things.
“The difficult thing is, Livie was innocent in this and she was killed by a lady who fell asleep. We look at it and think it’s not just your actions sometimes, you’ve got to be aware of your surroundings, because you just don’t know when someone else’s actions are going to impact you.
“Yes, it’s important we be road safe, but we need everyone to take that understanding on board. Families shouldn’t be losing their children.
“To hear the statistic that road trauma is the biggest killer of two to 14-year-olds, they haven’t even had a chance to have a future. It’s not fair that their lives are taken due to someone else’s actions.’’
When the family returned to the scene, they couldn’t comprehend how it happened.
“We put a cross down about two months afterwards. In our minds we had imagined that it was this horrible stretch, that it was really windy, or just straight, a boring stretch of road that would force the driver to fall asleep. It wasn’t.
“There was a service station just around the corner, there were rest places ... so many opportunities to pull over.
“It’s not worth it to keep going. Just pull over. We were so angry. This could have been prevented, she could still be with us and our family.
“We’re heartbroken that someone would continue to drive knowing they were tired.
“How do you teach people now to stop? You have to know the signs yourself, you need to say no, you’ve got to pull over.
“Olivia didn’t stand a chance because she had no airbags. She took the brunt of it.”
The driver of the car, Leona Pauline Paraha, walked from court last year, sentenced to five months’ jail wholly suspended, with an operational period of two years and disqualified from holding or obtaining a licence for 12 months.
“We never want another family to have to go through what we’ve gone through,’’ Ms Mitchell said. “Olivia was beautiful in every way. I know all parents say that, but she really was.”
IT is difficult to read about the death of little Olivia Douglas, simply because the tears flow and emotions overwhelm.
Think then about the pain and anguish of her parents as they relive that day almost two years ago. They go through it day after day, night after long night.
They were in another car and turned back when they realised something dreadful had happened to the vehicle carrying their precious child to a netball carnival at Bundaberg. Think of the chill in their stomachs as they saw the crumpled wrecks of two cars that had crashed. In one of those piles of metal was the body of Olivia, gone from this life, aged just eight.
Think of the mother, watching a stranger pluck Olivia’s lifeless body from the wreckage and gently place her on the ground. Think of the mother having to lie with her daughter’s body on the roadside. Think of how the family felt as a procession of compassionate people stopped to help, and then paramedics did all they could to try to breathe life back into Olivia and the driver of the other vehicle, to no avail. Think of the agony of watching the rescue helicopter sent to that devastating scene take to the air again, but not with the little girl whose constant chatter, love for everyone and zest for life had been halted in an instant. Instead it was transporting the injured driver who fell asleep at the wheel.
Think of trying to go through life from that moment on. The reminders in every room of the home. The siblings struggling with the death of their sister. The families of Olivia’s friends having to deal with children who cannot understand why.
Now explain why this keeps happening, with 88 deaths on Queensland roads so far this year – and at a time when travel has been curtailed because of COVID-19 restrictions.
Today is Fatality Free Friday. Olivia’s mum Tegan wants drivers to slow down, watch out and consider the possible consequences of the way they drive and the risks they take. She bravely spoke to the Bulletin this week. It was a gut-wrenching interview. Her partner Tim held her hand at times as both relived that awful day and the torment that followed. Olivia’s death remains raw for them, as too does the loss for the families of the 88 who have perished so far this year on the state’s roads. Statistics are just that – statistics. They do not explain how a crash occurred, whether someone fell asleep, was overtaking or playing with a phone.
We do know though that more than 36 were drivers, 14 were passengers, at least 21 were on a motorcycle or scooter; two were on bicycles and 12 were pedestrians. The Australian Road Safety Foundation says there should never be an excuse to take risks, but it suggests that having fewer cars on the roads during the pandemic crisis is fuelling a deadly complacency.
Incredibly, it says that nationally, one in four drivers surveyed admitted to taking road risks since the implementation of COVID-19 lockdowns. So at a time when death is stalking the land, idiots think they are bulletproof. It defies logic and beggars belief. Children are among the victims. If drivers have any compassion at all, they will at least think of the kids.