Young father crushed to death after container truck rolls onto his car

Truck accident

One person is dead after a container truck rolled onto this car. Picture: Tracee Lea
Source: The Daily Telegraph


Truck accident

One person is dead after a container truck rolled onto this car. Picture: Tracee Lea.
Source: The Daily Telegraph


Truck accident

One person is dead after a container truck rolled onto this car. Picture: Phil Rogers
Source: The Daily Telegraph


Crush crash

The scene of a fatal crash involving a container truck and cars where one person has died and several others are injured. Pic: Brad Hunter
Source: The Daily Telegraph


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A YOUNG father was instantly crushed to death when a 20-tonne truck toppled over and fell directly on top of his small sedan in Sydney’s southwest.


The accident happened on the Hume Highway at Liverpool, just before 11am.

Crash investigator Stephen Blair said it was one of the worst accidents he’d ever seen.

“This rates at the top of the order, to see a horrific thing like this with the vehicle crushed nearly beyond recognition,” Inspector Blair said.

“This is a tragic event that’s happened once again on our roads – innocent people have been sitting in their cars and through no fault of their own have been hurt or killed.”

Two other cars, including a green Toyota Camry, hit the truck but narrowly escaped being crushed.

Occupants of those vehicles were taken to Liverpool Hospital suffering trauma, shock and minor injuries.

Insp Blair said the truck’s speed might have been a factor but it was too early to say definitively.

“The investigators have received some information, but that has to be verified,” he said.

Police initially feared a child was also trapped inside after witness said the car was full of kids toys and a child restraint.

A truck driver behind the stricken vehicle ran to the driver’s aid, but said he had no pulse.

“What worried me most was Laughing Elmo and all these toys in the back seat,” the truck driver, Mark, said.

“I couldn’t see any children, but the vehicle was so badly crushed there could have been anything.”

The truck, which had filled up with timber at the nearby Moorebank timber yard, was turning left onto the Cumberland Highway, when it tipped over.

“It’s hit the median strip then just rolled,” Mark said.

A family in a car beside the crushed car hugged each other and cried while watching rescue efforts to lift the container.

The truck driver suffered minor injuries, and has been taken to hospital.

Police are still working to identify the identify the deceased driver, but said early indications are that it is a 48-year-old male.

NSW Fire Brigade rescue personnel are trying to lift the container from the car to see inside it.

Rescue crews have confirmed the driver was the only person in the car.

Diep Nguyen, whose car narrowly missed being crushed, said he thought he was going to die.

“When it came falling down, I thought:  ‘I’m gone’,” Mr Nguyen said.

He and his wife were waiting at a red light when the accident unfolded in front of them.

“It was slow moving (motion),” he said.

Sarah Elnoz was hanging the washing on her balcony and witnessed the truck tip over.

“I saw it flip, then all you could hear was the car it landed on, it’s horn was going continuously for ages,” she said.

“I just thought to myself, ‘oh my God, someone is in that car’.”

Ms Elnoz said the stretch of road is notoriously dangerous.

“People don’t realise it’s a sharp turn until they’re almost into it… There’s no warning signs either,” she said.

All lanes of the Cumberland Highway have reopened between the Hume Highway and Viscount Place at Liverpool after a fatal car and truck accident this morning.

But southbound traffic on the Cumberland Highway is heavy so motorists are advised to allow extra travel time.

Route 801 and 819 buses are also back to their normal routes after being diverted earlier.

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