Police say four people killed and five injured in a mini-van crash near Cobram in Victoria’s north may have been farm workers from the area.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A white mini-van struck a tree on Chapel Road in Muckatah, about 10 kilometres south of Cobram, at 5pm yesterday.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The crash happened on a narrow road in a farming area near Cobram. (ABC News)<\/p>\n
Four adult passengers in the white Toyota Hiace van, who are yet to be formally identified, died at the scene.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The five injured, including three children and the male driver, were taken to various hospitals.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Superintendent Ashley Mason says the “senseless loss of life” will devastate families in the lead-up to Christmas. (ABC News)<\/p>\n
Acting Superintendent Ashley Mason said the van was carrying six adults \u2014 three men and three women, as well as three children aged between 10 and 16.<\/p>\n
“It’s absolutely tragic. We’ve got four lives lost and as we know we are only 10 days away from Christmas.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Acting Superintendent Mason said some of the injured suffered multiple, critical injuries.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The \u2026 relationship between the occupants of the vehicle is also unknown to us and will be part of our investigation \u2026 but there is a possibility that they could have been workers within the local area,” he said.<\/p>\n
Narrow, rural road<\/p>\n
Phillip Barnes, 67, who has lived on Chapel Road all his life, said some locals avoided the narrow bitumen road because of the amount of traffic that used it.<\/p>\n
“During the summer, a lot of campers, caravans and fruit pickers go up and down the road,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I think the GPS brings them along.”<\/p>\n
Mr Barnes said trucks also used the road, which has a 100 kilometres per hour speed limit.<\/p>\n
“We’ve had one neighbour reckon he’s going to get a petition going to get a metre of bitumen on either side, so you don’t have to move into the gravel when a car passes you,” he said.<\/p>\n
“You have to move into gravel when a car approaches you and when the stones start spraying and the dust, it can be hairy.”<\/p>\n
The Victoria Police Major Collision Investigation Unit is investigating the crash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police say four people killed and five injured in a mini-van crash near Cobram in Victoria’s north may…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":449533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,11767,206647,206646,50,18610,8344],"class_list":{"0":"post-449532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-fatal","10":"tag-minivan","11":"tag-muckatah-crash","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-roads","14":"tag-victoria-police"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115725852782187673","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}