'Confronting and traumatic': Inside the world of the ACT's major collision team

Some buckets fill very slowly, others fill very quickly. And once the bucket fills to overflowing, it damages people physically and mentally.

Police and crime scene investigators are, like all first-responders, exposed to levels of trauma which most people in the community very rarely experience.

For members of the police major collision team, the horrific crash on the Monaro Highway in Hume in July 2018 was one such cataclysmic event.

A four-year-old Canberra boy, Blake Corney, suffered catastrophic head injuries in that collision, when a landscaping supplies truck slammed into the back of the family car while it was stationary, waiting for the traffic lights to change. The child was in the back seat.

Such were the stomach-churning details of the crash and its aftermath, including the injuries suffered by the child, that the coronial file, including photographs and statements, has been sealed.

Nearly all the members of the police major collision team who investigated that event were quietly moved on to other duties in the months after that incident. Resilient officers all, their personal buckets had overflowed with grief and shock.

Giving evidence to an ACT Assembly committee hearing in 2020, experienced NSW forensic crime scene investigator Esther McKay told how "your brain becomes quite wired to the trauma".

In her book Crime Scene, which details her spiral into post-tramautic stress disorder as a result of constant exposure to trauma, she told how she found it difficult to "disassociate myself from the world of catastrophe and crime".

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"There was no demarcation line as work and home had merged, become one, linked by a phone call or the sound of a pager. I was constantly waiting for that call," she wrote.

"I began to gauge my life on how bad the on-call period had been.

"At the time I didn't realise how the dark side of life was pulling me down."

Senior constable Nathan Smorhun is part of the new-look major collision team at ACT Policing since that 2018 crash in Hume. Already he has seen his fair share of death and gore, dismembered bodies and mangled wreckage.

He has also had to make that awful knock on the door every family member dreads.

"This is without doubt one of the most confronting, traumatic experience that any family member would go through," he said.

"Being told completely out of the blue that a loved one is no longer with them is one of the hardest things that I could possibly imagine.

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"Seeing the looks one people's faces when you give that [news], it is heartbreaking. And if we can be there for them to give that tiny bit of peace that something is being done to give them the answers they are wanting, then that's whole reason I do this job."

At the crash scene, much of senior constable Smorhun's job is measurement, collation and analysis.

The major collision team is on call 24/7. His team's role is a unique one in the police force. While at the scene it's primarily focused on a calculus and evidence collation, it's that final analysis - pulling together the critical brief of evidence - which becomes the summation of all the circumstances and causality so the coroner has a complete picture of what occurred, how and why.

The team's measurement and analysis now has become far more sophisticated and quicker than those of just a few years ago, when much of the material was gathered manually.

Crash scenes still have to be shut down, often for several hours, to study the debris field and collect evidence, including any CCTV or traffic camera imagery available.

But it's a far less time-consuming role now than it was, with customised electronic survey equipment now used to collect the millions of data points which electronically "map" the scene.

Only fixed points and features are recorded within that electronic survey file, allowing roads to reopen sooner and traffic to flow slowly past, their passage not recorded by the equipment.

In a small jurisdiction like the ACT, the investigating officers usually become the primary point of contact for the affected family, keeping them updated on how the investigation is progressing, or just being a sounding board for their grief. Often this contact may last for months following the incident.

"It's just being there for the families who have lost their loved ones on our roads," he said.

Every Christmas and new year period is one of concern given the flood of holiday traffic and an even greater inclination for people to drink and drive.

Collision investigators like Smorhun keep their phones at their bedside as the call from the operations team at Belconnen could come at any time. Often as not, it's in the dead of night or early morning.

At 6.20am in December two years ago, a car ran a red light in Hindmarsh Drive, arrowing through the Melrose Drive intersection at high speed, losing control and smashing into a tree. The 28-year-old driver, the sole occupant, was ejected from the vehicle and suffered horrific injuries.

He succumbed to those injuries in hospital 13 days later. The tree is now gone, but a small memorial is located at the scene, largely unnoticed by the passing traffic.

Back at that same scene two years later, senior constable Smorhun said he often had cause to reflect on how driver behaviour contributed to road trauma.

"The issues that we're having with distraction, drink and drug-driving now are the same issues that we were having two years ago; the same issues we were having four years ago," he said.

"It's a bit disheartening that certain elements of the Canberra community are not taking on the lessons being learned."

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