Daniel Andrews’ 000 call from car accident involving wife and Ryan Meuleman revealed

You read it HERE first: our report in May 2023, quoting Melbourne Industrial Designer Colin Robertson’s citizen’s investigation of the accident is now given even more credence by the audio recording from the scene. The following report by Stephen Drill is published in the Herald Sun and The Daily Telegraph.

 

Daniel Andrews’ triple-0 call from his infamous car accident can be revealed, with the former premier telling emergency services “we’ve hit him.”

The audio directly contradicts a police statement the former premier made a month after the crash in which he said “the cyclist hit our vehicle” and raises further questions about the accident that has dogged the former premier for more than a decade.

The Herald Sun has audio of the phone call that Mr Andrews made following a collision with a teenage cyclist in 2013 which is at the centre of a bitter legal battle.

Mr Andrews and his wife Catherine, who was driving at the time, have consistently held that cyclist Ryan Meuleman was at fault, with Mr Andrews telling reporters in 2017 that the teen was “moving at speed’’ when he “absolutely T-boned the car”.

And in his statement to police signed on February 5, 2013 at Springvale police station, Mr Andrews said “I want to make it clear – the cyclist hit our vehicle”.

Ryan Meuleman spent 10 days in hospital as he recovered from broken ribs, a punctured lung and had some of his spleen removed after being flown to the Royal Children’s Hospital.

The story was exposed by the Herald Sun.

In the call on January 7, 2013, Mr Andrews describes the accident.

“We’ve turned right into Ridley Street and a kid’s come flying through on the bike path and we’ve hit him,” Mr Andrews says.

“He’s a teenager…I’d say he’d be……he’d be 15.”

The operator asked how many people needed an ambulance and asked where the teenager was and who was with him.

“I’m just about 10 metres away, trying to get a mobile phone signal. My wife is with him at the moment,” he said.

The operator also asked if anyone else had called an ambulance.

“Was someone else on the phone to the ambulance maybe?”, the operator said.

Mr Andrews replied: “Ahhh, I don’t think so…ahh, my wife, my wife might be.”

The operator added: “No worries….We’ve just had a job pop in from 10 Ridley Street, Blairgowrie, for a similar thing, for a bike vs car.”

Mr Andrews said: “Well, that’s the one.”

Mr Andrews had initially sought to block access to his phone records but later backflipped. Those records however are yet to be located and provided to the lawyers for Ryan Meuleman, who is suing Slater and Gordon over the way they handled his compensation claim.

Mr Andrews was opposition leader at the time of the accident.

Mrs Andrews was not breath tested and there were questions on how the police handled the incident at Blairgowrie on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.

Mr Andrews drove the car away from the scene.

The long serving premier hit out what he claimed were “appalling conspiracy theories” in September following reports that the investigation into the crash was “deeply flawed”.

Ryan Meuleman’s father Peter Meuleman called on Victorian police to reopen their investigation and said it was “disturbing” to hear the audio of the phone call.

“It’s really quite a chilling piece of audio,” he told The Herald Sun.

“It makes you relive it again and again, each time I hear it I picture my son going through it. And imagining him lying on the road.

“It makes me angry. That call was made six and half minutes after the crash. That’s a big gap.

“If I was involved in an accident the first thing you do is call triple zero.

“The case is about enabling my son to move forward with his life.

“I care about vindication for my son and getting justice for my son.

“He hasn’t been capable of holding down a job. That’s the mental scarring that is the legacy of this accident.”

He responded to criticism he or his wife had not contacted the Meuleman family by responding: “Now, let’s just be really clear about this, my wife, on the night, only a few hours after the incident, spoke with police, she spoke with the Royal Children’s Hospital. They couldn’t tell her much but redirected her back to police. I think she’s had five conversations with police in a week getting an update each time of his condition. So we’ve been well informed.”

Mr Andrews has stated he was sitting in the front passenger seat of the vehicle while his children were in the rear seat when the teenager careered over the bonnet and on to the windscreen.

The Andrews’ were returning from a trip to the beach, Mr Andrews told media, and his wife had “absolutely” not been drinking.

“The police did not breath test her, no. I’ve not been involved in an accident like that before. I don’t know how usual or unusual that is,” he said.

“This was one o’clock in the afternoon. We had three little kids in the car.

“She spent quite a lot of time with the Victoria Police. They were on the scene before the ambulance.

“She’s co-operated with police, there was every opportunity and she would have not difficulty in being breath tested if they asked her to.”

Ryan, in 2013, said he had looked left and right before entering the intersection and didn’t see a vehicle approaching.

“I think it was an accident. I only saw them for a split second and they hit me. Very scary,” he said.

“She (Mrs Andrews) was yelling ‘Help’ and ‘Call an ambulance’, ‘You’ll be all right.”

This week Victorian MP David Limbrick, under parliamentary privilege, said Daniel Andrews had admitted in the call that “he hit” the cyclist, which is now being described as #bikeboyscandal.

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3 Responses to Daniel Andrews’ 000 call from car accident involving wife and Ryan Meuleman revealed

  1. Garry Stannus says:

    1. Audio of Andrews’ triple zero call.
    https://9now.nine.com.au/a-current-affair/daniel-andrews-ryan-meuleman-crash-frankston-triple-zero-call/ed7b243e-7af1-4dca-8114-d2c47dd66089

    2. Photos including the Andrews’ car
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11405901/Dan-Catherine-Andrews-car-crash-Ryan-Meuleman-Blairgowrie-Mornington-Peninsula-Victoria.html
    This Daily Mail article contains an image of the Andrews’ car with the windscreen shattered on the driver’s side. The same image contains a ‘camera’ icon with “+13” and “View gallery” in the image’s bottom, right-hand corner. It is an active link to a gallery … click on it and you will see a photo of the car which has apparently been hit on the right-hand side, forward of the front wheel.

    In my view, this is consistent with the Andrews’ account of the car being hit on its right side by the cyclist’s bike.

    3. The accident scene
    Please open the next link to view an image showing the path that the cyclist was using… where it reaches Ridley St. The path is not a street or roadway… it’s a path between properties and the scrub next to Melbourne Rd:
    https://www.instantstreetview.com/@-38.372363,144.775632,20.24h,-9.64p,1.27z,EEKN3ngXuNNxi3KshqCi4g

    Some observations…
    Dan Andrews’ telling triple zero that they’d ‘hit a cyclist’ is to me nothing more than telling the operator as briefly as possible that a cyclist has been involved in a collision with a car. It would have sounded silly to the operator if Andrew’s had phrased it as ‘we’ve been hit by a cyclist.

    Apparently while Dan Andrews made his call (at the street corner), his wife (or someone else?) had also made an emergency call. It would be helpful to have the audio or a transcript of that call.

    If it is fair to question the Andrews’ account, then it should be fair to question the cyclist’s account. For example, was he riding as slowly as he claimed?

    • andrew says:

      Thanks but that is perhaps your least convincing comment to date, Gary. It just seems like wishful thinking, sorry to say.

      Reminder from our September 17, 2024 report:
      “An explosive 36-page report by a former police assistant commissioner, obtained by the Herald Sun, found Victoria Police were involved in “an overt cover-up to avoid implicating a political figure in a life-threatening” incident.
      The review, by the state’s former Assistant Commissioner for Traffic and Operations Dr Raymond Shuey, found the Andrews’ family SUV was “travelling at speed” and on the wrong side of the road when it hit teenage cyclist Ryan Meuleman on a Blairgowrie street on January 7, 2013.”

      We also reported Colin Robertson in our May 2014 article:
      “The path is not a wide, straight track but an undulating, sandy unmade path, importantly, the path is offset by about 5 meters as it crosses Ridley Street. A cyclist crossing Ridley Street at speed, would most likely end up in the vegetation opposite, you HAVE to slow down in order to negotiate the turn.
      “The path is used by cyclists, dog walkers and local vehicles, there’s pot holes, sticks, rocks etc; it’s not a path you could speed along even if you wanted to.” 
      “…in the ambulance report unearthed this April, it was the Territory that crashed into the cyclist who was turning left into Ridley Street.”

      In 2017, Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission (IBAC) investigated the police response and found officers failed to breathalyse Catherine Andrews as would be normal after an accident.

      Questions that remain:
      Q: Who were the police officers who attended the crash? Have they been interviewed?
      Why did they ignore police protocols to:
      1. Breath test the Andrews
      2. Allow Daniel Andrews to leave the scene in the collision vehicle.
      3. Impound the vehicle
      4. Close the road in preparation for a crash scene investigation unit.
      Q: Who did Andrews call immediately after the accident?
      Q: Who was the insurance agent/company acting for the Andrews/Vic Govt who/that contacted Mr Meuleman’s father? What do they know? Who instructed them?

      All the above provides the context for the newly revealed 000 call.

  2. Garry Stannus says:

    Well done, for posting this, Andrew. I was just about to send the script to you when I noticed you’d posted this latest news.

    Actually, I find that A Current Affair has posted the audio of the triple zero call made by Andrews. Please listen to it at:

    https://9now.nine.com.au/a-current-affair/daniel-andrews-ryan-meuleman-crash-frankston-triple-zero-call/ed7b243e-7af1-4dca-8114-d2c47dd66089

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