Tag Archives: oceania

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Man charged after evaded breath test ends in police pursuit and crash

A man has been charged after he allegedly tried to evade a breath test and ended up crashing into another car in Sydney's west.

A green Holden Captiva allegedly avoided a roadside breath test on the Hume Highway in Carramar around 9.15pm on Friday before being stopped at a secondary breath test site on Quest Street.

Inspector Joshua Dixon said the 29-year-old driver didn't hand over his licence then did a U-turn and drove along the wrong side of the Hume Highway.

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Inspector Joshua Dickson addresses a man facing charges over a crash in Villawood.

This sparked a police pursuit which was terminated shortly after because of safety concerns.

The man crashed into a Toyota Kluger and allegedly ran away from the scene.

"The collision occurred almost instantaneously after the pursuit was commenced," Dixon said.

He was arrested nearby after police chased him down.

The driver of the Toyota, a 40 year-old woman, and her two passengers, children aged eight and 10, were treated by paramedics for minor injuries.

Police searched the man and found $2200 in cash on him and saws, a jackhammer, power tools, and a saw kit in his car.

"There was a large quantity of tools in the car, high-value tools. Police are alleging the tools are stolen," Dixon said.

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It was later revealed the man's learner's licence had expired, he was breaching bail conditions, and had a first instance warrant for his arrest.

He has been charged with a range of driving and suspected stolen property offences.

"The male driver has exhibited very dangerous driving and what appears to be self-preservation in order to avoid detection by police," Dixon said.

"In doing that, he has driven on the incorrect side of a busy highway and has had a collision with a motorist who had no right to be in that collision.

"This driver had no right to be on the road."

The 29-year-old has been refused bail and will face court later today.

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Nine's journalists recognised at Kennedy Awards

Nine's journalists have been recognised for their outstanding work at the 2022 Kennedy Awards.

Nick McKenzie claimed the top gong and was honoured with the 2022 Journalist of the Year award for his body of work in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald and on 60 Minutes.

Nine.com.au's Brooke Campbell was awarded the Cliff Neville Award for Outstanding Team Player or Mentor.

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Outstanding Finance Reporting went to the 60 Minutes team, Joel Tozer and Nick McKenzie, for their work on The Fallen Star – an investigation into Sydney's The Star casino.

The 60 Minutes team, Adele Ferguson and Joel Tozer, also took out the Outstanding Consumer Affairs for the Exposing the dark underbelly of the cosmetic surgery industry body of work.

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The 60 Minutes team of Tom Steinfort, Sheree Gibson, Laura Sparkes, Luke Wilson, Mathew Brown, Andrew Page and Renee Hudson was also awarded the Tom Krause Award for Outstanding Foreign Correspondent for The President, their interview with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Nine's mastheads also received a number of recognitions, with Outstanding Political Reporting going to Lucy Cormack and Alex Smith from Sydney Morning Herald for The Barilaro NYC Saga, their reporting on the former NSW deputy premier's appointment to a plum US trade role.

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The Vince O'Farrell Award for Outstanding Cartoon went to Megan Herbert from The Age.

A full list of the winners and their work can be found here.

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Lightning strike survivor's arm tingles when a storm is coming

An ominous-looking storm was rolling in when Kristoffer Green and his family pulled up at an Ipswich medical centre in Queensland.

It was November 2015 and Green's young daughter had a wasp bite he and his wife wanted a doctor to take a look at.

"We saw the dark clouds and we said, 'Oh, we better watch that'," the father-of-two, 31, told 9news.com.au.

READ MORE: Teen girl struck by lightning while inside her home

Kristoffer Green was holding an umbrella when he was struck by lightning back in 2015.

Green thought nothing more of the storm until they were leaving the medical centre in the pouring rain.

"I was helping my wife get my daughter in the backseat of the car and I was holding an umbrella," Green said.

"The umbrella had a wooden handle, but the tip of my right index finger was resting on the metal pole in the centre."

Green said he remembers almost nothing of the moment the lightning bolt struck, hitting the metal top of his umbrella, travelling down its shaft and up his index finger into his arm.

"It was just like a blinding light and then I blacked out," he said.

"My wife said I just simply collapsed."

Thinking fast, Green's wife raced into the medical centre to get help from staff.

"When I woke up in the medical centre my wife was crying over me and I was just completely shocked. I had no idea where I was or what had happened," he said.

Medical centre staff had hooked Green up to a monitor, which showed his heart was racing "a million miles an hour", he said.

The young dad, who was 24 at the time, was taken by ambulance to Ipswich hospital for monitoring before being sent home the next day. 

Every year, around five to ten Australians are killed by lightning strikes and 100 injuries are reported, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

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Salt in sea spray could be the reason lightning activity seems more intense over land than sea, a new study has claimed.

Green is one of the lucky majority to survive a lightning strike.

But the effects, both physical and psychological, would linger for him.

For days after the strike, Green said his right arm would not stop tingling.

Green went from liking storms and taking pleasure in watching the lightning dance across the sky, to having an extreme aversion to the weather phenomenon.

"If there was a storm, I would get stressed and have heart palpitations," he said.

Green claims he even developed a sort of internal barometer of his own, which alerted him if a storm was approaching.

"For a few years after the strike, my right arm – where the lightning went through – would tingle and start to hurt before a storm was overhead.

"I even sometimes still do it. I'll say to my wife, 'There's a storm coming, hun' and sure enough, a few hours later, there's a storm coming in." 

Smells of 'burning flesh and hair'

Far North Queensland man Sol Daley was out on the front verandah watching a storm on his rural property in Innisfail in 2016 when he was hit by a lightning bolt.

"My partner at the time was in the front yard moving pot plants around," he said.

"Funnily enough, I said to her, 'Get out of there because there's lightning about'.

 "As she stepped on the verandah, 'bang', the lightning hit." 

Sol Daley was hit by lightning at his property in Innisfail, northern Queensland, in 2016.

Daley was sitting on an aluminium chair.

"It was like a big blue finger and it came across, went through my arm and came out my foot," he said. 

"All I remember was the incredible bang, the flash of light and it was like someone was trying to kick their way out of my chest and between my legs.

"There was a smell of burning flesh and burning hair."

Daley spent a day at Innisfail Hospital before being sent home.

But it soon became apparent that his recovery would not be straightforward.

"The next day I woke up, and I felt sort of felt okay, but when I went to speak, I couldn't. My words were all mixed up like I had a stroke," he said.

Daley said his speech issues continued for about a month, along with other symptoms.

"I was getting scrambled thoughts and I used to get the shakes, I called it the electric boogaloo."

Lightning does strike twice

Julie Martineau, from Iowa in the US, is living proof that the old idiom "lightning doesn't strike twice" has no basis in fact.

The first time Martineau was hit was back in 1999 when she was living in a mobile home.

It was the evening, a storm had blown up and she was doing the laundry. 

As Martineau put her hand on the clothes dryer door, a bolt of lightning missed a large tree overhanging her mobile home and shot down the wiring connected to the dryer.

The electric current entered Martineau's right hand, travelled across her chest and exited through her left hand.

This photo of a lightning strike survivor shows the feathered markings left on his body by the electrical charge.

"I remember everything," she said.

"I remember the bolt striking, I remember the crackle of the bolt coming down and feeling like time stopped. 

"I could hear my heart beating and counting the heartbeats and thinking 'Holy crow, there's something really wrong' and trying to let go of the dryer and I couldn't let go, the current was holding me in place."

Martineau said for months after the lightning strike she suffered a range of debilitating health effects, some of which still plague her today.

"I had a lot of pain, mainly in my arms. There was some confusion, some irritability, some personality changes, but the big one was that I couldn't sleep."

Just over a year later, in October 2000, Martineau had moved from her mobile home after buying a house.

It was night-time and a storm was raging outside.

"I was asleep, lying in a waterbed and somehow a bolt came in through the second-storey window," she said. 

"My bed was maybe (a few metres) from the window and the bolt came in through the window and basically flashed over the bladder for the waterbed. 

"It kind of flashed over that and caught me in the process, I was collateral damage."

Martineau has since started up a Facebook support group for lightning strike survivors.

A Native American, Martineau said she sought answers during a traditional ceremony about her two painful lightning experiences and had found peace in the belief the spirits had chosen her.

How to keep safe in a storm

Every day, there are as many as 8 million lightning strikes globally, with around 44 strikes recorded per second at any one time. 

In Australia, Darwin is the thunderstorm capital, with over 80 thunderstorm days per year.

So what can you do to keep safe during a storm? Here are some of the Bureau of Meteorology's top tips:

  • Stay inside and shelter well clear of windows, doors and skylights

  • Don't use a landline telephone during a thunderstorm

  • Avoid touching brick or concrete, or standing barefoot on concrete or tiled floors; and

  • Keep checking the Bureau's website or app and listen to your local radio station for storm warnings and updates.

For Davey, it all comes down to taking care and using common sense.

"Don't think you're too good and that it's not going to happen because it can happen in a heartbeat," he said.

Contact reporter Emily McPherson at em********@******om.au.