A woman has died in hospital after being involved in a head-on crash with a man believed to have been fleeing after stabbing his partner.
The 39-year-old woman, from Winkleigh in Tasmania’s north, was driving on the West Tamar Highway at Legana on Friday afternoon when the collision occurred.
The man, a 42-year-old from Western Australia, died at the scene, while the woman was taken to the Royal Hobart Hospital in a critical condition.
Tasmania Police released a statement on Sunday evening confirming the woman had died in hospital.
Both of those killed in the crash were the sole occupants of their vehicle.
Police say the man was also the perpetrator of a “serious wounding incident” at a house in Exeter shortly before the crash.
In that incident, a woman in her 40s was stabbed multiple times by a man she had been in a relationship with for about six months.
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She was subsequently taken to Launceston General Hospital, where she remains in a serious but stable condition.
The couple, from Perth in Western Australia, were visiting Tasmania and staying at a relative’s house in Exeter after arriving in the state on Wednesday.
Police said two of the woman’s children were also at the house at the time of the stabbing, but that they were not direct witnesses.
Shortly after the stabbing, police received a report that the vehicle the man had fled in had been driving erratically and involved in the collision on the West Tamar Highway.
“Our thoughts are with the loved ones of both women, and all those affected by these incidents,” police said in a statement.
Police are appealing for anyone with dash-cam footage of a blue Skoda travelling on the West Tamar Highway in the lead-up to the crash to reach out.