I'm a murderer: learner driver's scream at pedestrian carnage
Harriet Alexander
December 1, 2008
A learner driver, who surveyed the carnage after she mounted a footpath and accelerated into a group of pedestrians, screamed: "I'm a murderer, I'm a murderer."
A 20-year-old woman, Emma Hansen, was killed in the accident in Kogarah last year, and 11 others were injured.
But the Glebe Coroner's Court heard today that the driver, Rose Deng, is still permitted to hold a driver's licence because charges of negligent driving causing death were dismissed under the Mental Health Act this year.
Ms Deng, a Sudanese widow, had been visiting her son in hospital when a family friend offered to take her for a driving lesson for some relief. She was on her learner's licence.
The two drove to Port Botany but on their return Ms Deng's friend became concerned that she was not taking a corner sharply enough, so he placed his hand on the steering wheel to correct her driving, the court heard.
Ms Deng panicked, mounted the kerb and pressed the accelerator instead of the brake, the court was told.
Ms Hansen had just bought some sushi when the red Toyota Echo crashed into her, dragging her beneath the car into three bus stop poles.
The court heard that when the car finally came to a stop, Ms Deng began pulling her hair and smashing her head on the gutter.
"[She was] ripping all her hair out and screaming 'I'm a murderer, I'd rather die', just over and over again," Constable Kate Mansell, the first police officer to arrive, said.
Constable Mansell said Ms Deng also said, "I'm a murderer, I'm a murderer" and smashed her head on the gutter.
She said Ms Deng looked like she was having a fit.
Footage of the bus stop crash drew gasps of shock in the Coroner's Court on the first day of the inquest into Ms Hansen's death.
CCTV footage taken from the nearby ANZ Bank shows two women pushing strollers along the footpath, seconds before they were run down.
Several people were shown lying in the street amid debris.
Detective Sergeant John Kelly, the officer in charge of the crash investigation, told the court shoes, mobile phones, thongs, sushi rolls, a white blanket and a tipped-over pram were left strewn in the street.
Clumps of bloodied hair were found stuck to the car's shattered windscreen, he said.
Ms Hansen's friend, Portia Parkhill, was waiting to draw money from an automatic teller machine and looking into the eyes of her friend walking towards her with a sushi roll, when she saw a red car come up behind her.
"I remember looking up the street towards the newsagency, towards the intersection," Ms Parkhill told the court today of the day her friend was killed.
"And I saw the car, the red car, on the footpath, and I saw it behind Emma. I couldn't be sure if it was half on the footpath or totally on the footpath but I saw it [had] left the road.
"The next thing I knew I was sitting on the ground."
The closed circuit television footage showed Ms Parkhill suddenly thrown to the ground.
She told the court that she got up and heard men shouting and pointing to another one of her friends, Caroline Kim, who was lying on the ground. She rolled over Ms Kim, who appeared to revive. And then Ms Parkhill noticed one of Ms Hansen's cowboy boots on the ground.
"I knew she really liked that shoe and I thought, 'Why is her shoe there?' "
It was not until she had been to the hospital and was on her way home in the car that she received a call informing her that Ms Hansen was dead.
The inquest will also consider the competency of learner driver instructors and whether provisions should be introduced to disqualify drivers who have avoided charges under the Mental Health Act.
Ms Hansen's mother, Lynne Hansen, was at the inquest today, wearing a necklace with a diamond-encrusted "E" for "Emma" around her neck.
Outside the court, she said that she wore the necklace with her daughter's initial every day.
"She was gorgeous," she said of her daughter, pulling a photograph of the smiling fashion student from her wallet.
"She was model material. She went to Russia to help the kids, funded it all herself. She was a gorgeous girl."
Ms Deng's lawyer has previously told the court his client had endured torture in her Sudanese homeland before arriving in Australia in 1994 and that the crash had exacerbated an unspecified long-term "mental condition".
A mental health report has quoted Ms Deng as saying that if it were not for her children she would have killed herself after the accident.
Ms Deng is undergoing psychiatric treatment and did not appear in court today.
The hearing continues.
with AAP
