A French national who allegedly caused $20,000 worth of damage after crashing into an iconic Sydney fountain was caught “eating McDonald’s” when police arrived.<\/p>\n
Emergency services responded to reports that a hire car had reversed into Hyde Park’s Archibald Fountain shortly around 3am on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Officers discovered the SUV stuck on the outer edge of the water feature upon arrival.<\/p>\n
They spoke with a 21-year-old man, who allegedly told them he was delivering a food order when the incident occurred.<\/p>\n
Police say the man is a French national in Australia on a working visa.<\/p>\n
He was taken to St Vincent\u2019s Hospital to be checked as a precaution and for mandatory testing.<\/p>\n
NSW Police Inspector Anderson Lessing told 702 ABC Sydney the brazen driver was “eating Macca’s” when police arrived.<\/p>\n
“Half of (the car) was sticking inside, and half of it was sticking out, with the driver still inside,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Strangely, he was still eating Macca’s there.”<\/p>\n
The man was taken to Day Street police station, where he has now been charged with negligent driving, not reversing the vehicle safely, and unlicensed driving.<\/p>\n
He has been granted conditional bail to appear in Downing Centre Local Court on Wednesday, July 15, 2026.<\/p>\n
The vehicle has now been removed from the fountain.<\/p>\n
Police have been told the estimated damage is between $15,000 and $20,000.<\/p>\n
“There’s scratching and things like that, but no great structural damage to the fountain,” Inspector Lessing added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A French national who allegedly caused $20,000 worth of damage after crashing into an iconic Sydney fountain was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[247,14591],"class_list":["post-23832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sydney","tag-sydney","tag-sydney-cbd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}