Five murder counts after truck horror

Press, 19 August 1983, Page 1

Five murder counts after truck horror

NZPA Alice Springs An Alice Springs truck driver, aged 36, has been charged with five counts of murder after a huge roadtrain ploughed into a crowded motel bar in Ayers Rock, early yesterday. About 30 people were injured, 12 seriously. The Alice Springs police said that the man would apear in the local Magistrate’s Court this morning.

The driver fled after the crash. After a 4Vz hour search by aboriginal trackers and police from Darwin and Alice Springs, he was found at a construction site about 17km from the hotel.

Four people were killed instantly, and a fifth died after 5Vz hours of surgery at Alice Springs Hospital. She had been crushed by the truck. Her name has not been released. The other four dead were Mrs Patricia Slinn, of Alice Springs; Mr David Seng, aged 24, of Woodford, Queensland; Mrs Adrian Durnin, aged 21, of Fitzroy, South Australia; and Ms Helen Fuller, aged 22, of South West Rocks, New South Wales.

An Alice Springs woman, aged 21, was transferred to the Royal Adelaide Hospital yesterday afternoon in a critical condition, with head injuries.

Shortly before the 130tonne truck and its several

trailers plunged 30m into the bar of the small brick motel, a man was asked to leave after being refused a drink, said survivors.

“The whole motel has been wrecked. The scene was a bloodbath,” said a policeman. The injured, 12 of them seriously, were taken by road and aircraft 400 km to the nearest town, Alice Springs. The bar was packed with local people and holidaymakers at the outback beauty spot to see Ayers Rock, an Australian landmark.

“The truck came right through the building, right up to the bar. People were pinned underneath it. Someone had to climb up and turn off the engine,” said a witness. The truck is still buried deep among the debris of the motel. The police were astonished that two full fuel tanks on the back did not ignite.

The police at Ayers Rock said: “There were only two policemen and a bush nursing sister to cope with what must have looked like a war scene.”

The St John Ambulance base at Alice Springs received the first call from the scene at 1.58 a.m.

Deputy Superintendent Stephen Peers said: "We

pulled pilots, three doctors, and four nurses out of bed — the first plane took off at 2.30 a.m. and landed just over an hour later.”

Two plane loads of injured landed at Alice Springs just after 9 a.m., and a third private aircraft had been chartered to transport additional medical and nursing staff to the scene.

Mr Erwin Chlanda, the chief reporter of the “Advocate” newspaper in Alice Springs, flew to Ayers Rock yesterday morning.

“About 40 tourists were standing there in a stunned silence. The police had cordoned the area off. The bodies of the victims were laid out on the back veranda of the motel. They were screened off by mattresses so the onlookers couldn’t see,” he said. “We saw the entire prime-mover (truck) inside the bar. It had gone through a courtyard where cars and coaches had been parked and damaged a bus on the way in. “Witnesses said it had collected a number of people drinking at the bar, then veered slightly to the left,” he said. “People were pinned under the bull bar of the prime-mover and under the front axle. It also pinned some of them against the rear wall of the bar.”