Police are struggling to understand the circumstances of an alleged high-speed crash between two vehicles that resulted in the deaths of four people in central Victoria.
Those killed were passengers in a Peugeot that collided with a Toyota Hilux ute at an intersection near Shepparton on Wednesday afternoon.
The driver of the car was airlifted to the Royal Melbourne hospital in a serious condition. The driver of the Hilux ute was taken to a local hospital with minor injuries.
The acting assistant commissioner, Justin Goldsmith, said police were having trouble identifying the passengers who were killed, while the ute driver was in shock.
“It’s a really high-speed accident, the impact would have been almost beyond comprehension,” Goldsmith told ABC Radio.
“So he’s well and truly suffering the effects of shock from the accident.”
The crash happened at a four-way intersection in a remote area surrounded by farmland and it’s believed no one witnessed the crash.
“It’s not a busy area at all, [it’s] got traffic signs … something’s clearly gone awry and that’s going to be the subject of the investigation as to how those two cars collided,” Goldsmith said.
He said it was unclear if the passengers inside the Peugeot were locals but the Hilux driver was from the area.
“It reverberates right throughout the local communities, but right throughout the broader community in Victoria as well, so it’s incredibly traumatic,” he said.
On Thursday the state’s public transport minister, Ben Carroll, said authorities would upgrade the intersection if needed.
“It’s a terrible, terrible incident that has occurred,” he said.
“We’ll let Victoria police get on with their job of coming to grips with what has actually occurred at this intersection.
“Any detail, any information, anything we can do to make that intersection safer, we will.”