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Wednesday January 7, 2009

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Hinch Blog: I don't believe

Posted by: By Derryn Hinch, 3AW Drive | 13 November, 2008 - 5:03 PM

This is one of those stories where if you are right nobody remembers and if you are wrong nobody forgets. It’s about a road rage incident which first became public on 3AW’s Breakfast Program yesterday. A terrifying story about a young mother, a motor-bike rider, a baby and a sawn-off shotgun.

READ: The 3AW Breakfast story from Wednesday

You may have been surprised that I made no mention of it on the program yesterday. That’s because there were many aspects of this story that I, quite frankly, didn’t believe.

And I wasn’t surprised that the Herald Sun didn’t feature the story this morning when usually such a story about a young mother and baby terrorised by a shotgun-toting road rager would be on Page One.

Let’s briefly give the story as told by a woman calling herself ‘Lucy’ to the Breakfast guys and by Police Media in a release yesterday afternoon.

She was driving north along the Hume Highway, near Somerton, in heavy traffic about 5p.m. With her ‘little baby playing in the back seat’. She inadvertently cut off a motor bike. The bike rider overtook her in the emergency lane, pulled in front of her car and stopped dead. How she didn’t run him over wasn’t explained. Then he turned, pointed a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun at her through the windscreen.

Lucy said she froze. Later she speculated that maybe he didn’t shoot because he saw the baby. She then swerved around him into the other lane and escaped. But he overtook her, she says, at 200 kilometres an hour on his small, sporty red motorbike and dodging in and out of the traffic disappeared. Must have been quite a rider. I’m not sure what he’d done with the shotgun by then.

There was also a truck that stopped in the middle lane behind her and that driver must have seen what was happening. With the bike stopped. Lucy stopped. The truck stopped. There must have been some peak hour traffic build-up but Police told us this afternoon that no witnesses had come forward.

The Police media release says ‘The rider is described as having fair skin, aged between 16 and 26 and wearing a dark coloured t-shirt and light coloured jeans. His helmet may have been of an open face design, or enclosed with the visor open.’  Lucy says she doesn’t remember if he was wearing a helmet or not.

The guy was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. Where would he have hidden the shotgun which must have been in easy reach if he could produce it and aim it in seconds?  A sawn-off shotgun has got to be 40-50 centimetres long. He wasn’t wearing a jacket to hide it. He wasn’t wearing bulky leathers.

As they used to say in the TV show Dragnet ‘There are eight million stories in this naked city’. The old Police reporter in me says this isn’t one of them.

Blog comments Your Say

  • If it is true, the biker probably had good reason to be upset with her. She acts as if she did nothing wrong at all. If a biker was upset with her, it may be due to the fact she almost killed him with her careless driving.

    She should feel bad about that, not about him "allegedly" pointing a gun at her, which sounds pretty suss anyway.

    OzBill Thursday 13 November, 2008 - 5:13 PM

  • What did 'Lucy' sound like? A toothless bogan with no life whose bad driving skills lead her to being given the finger by a motorcyclist? In my experience with the Police the majority of driving complaints are made by the at-fault party to cover their arse in case the other driver (seemingly legitimately) makes a complain to. Although Derryn looks as though he may have made a wrong call on this one, good on him for doing it.

    Joel Sunday 23 November, 2008 - 6:02 PM

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