Melbourne car crash: 'All you could hear was the hits and the screams', witness says
Updated
Witnesses have described hearing screams and seeing bodies "thrown into the air" after a vehicle ploughed into pedestrians outside Melbourne's Flinders Street Station.
Witness Jim owns a bake shop on Flinders Street and said the incident happened on one of the busiest corners in Melbourne.
"He seemed to be travelling at about 80-100 kilometres (per hour) down Flinders Street in a westerly direction," he said.
"The intersection was full of pedestrians and he ploughed through pedestrians.
"The only thing slowing him down was him hitting pedestrians.
"It was packed. Our stores was packed. The pedestrians crossing the road, it was completely packed.
"It was, like, solid with people … all you could hear was the sounds of the hits and the screams.
"All you could hear was, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang."
Jim said by coincidence he was already calling emergency services when the vehicle ploughed through the area.
"Funnily enough there was some drug-addled gentleman next to the store so I was ringing triple-0 for him so, I hung up but there were ambulances or police cars in attendance," he said.
Witness John said:
"It was just a horrific scene. Bodies were just thrown into the air."
Another man who was at Flinders Street at the time, David said: "I heard the engine rev, I heard the first bump, I turned around, because it was behind me at that point and I just saw it ploughing through the rest of the pedestrians".
Isaac, who works in the area, did not see the incident unfold but could hear the crowd's reaction.
"I was heading to my office on Flinders Street and the impact I actually heard inside my office, then the next thing I heard screaming and came running straight outside," he said.
"I just saw a car with — it looked like it was bit busted up, and some pedestrians sprawled out all over the concrete — it was pretty shocking to see, that's for sure."
He was not sure how many people had been injured.
"I did see at least three — that's because there were so many people around and attending to the ones that were hit so yeah — I didn't know what was going on in front of that," he said.
"I don't even want to try and think of it."
John said he hoped what he heard on Flinders Street was not the SUV colliding with prams.
"I saw a car, a SUV coming at high speed and really just heard the collision with people with bags and what must be shopping trolleys — and I hope not prams," he told ABC Radio Melbourne.
"I've really never seen anything like this before and I haven't stopped shaking."
Topics: disasters-and-accidents, emergency-incidents, law-crime-and-justice, melbourne-3000, vic, australia
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