Five Killed In Drunken Sydney Harbour ’joyride’

Five young people were killed in a boat crash in Sydney Harbour this morning when a fishing vessel slammed into an overcrowded cruiser apparently out on an illegal overnight joyride.

All nine other people aboard the cruiser were injured, one of them critically, in the accident, which happened in the pre-dawn darkness not far from the city’s iconic Harbour Bridge.

Police said the dead, four women and a man, were all in their teens and early 20s.

The early signs pointed to an evening of merry-making that went tragically wrong. “This is every parent’s nightmare,” Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister, said on Austrialian radio. “So much of Sydney’s life and activity happens in and around the harbour. People go out to celebrate and have a good time, and for this to be the end of it is just breathtaking.

Police said the five victims died at the scene, while an 18-year-old woman and eight men in their 20s and early 30s were taken to the Royal North Shore Hospital. The two people aboard the fishing boat were not hurt.

Doctors at the hospital said Thursday evening that a 30-year-old man with severe head injuries was not expected to survive. Sydney’s Daily Telegraph reported that one of the dead may have been a US citizen. The US consulate in Sydney confirmed an American was on board but would release no further details and would not say whether that person survivived.

The owner of the cruiser, John McPherson, said his vessel was used in his ship repair business and that he had no idea why it was not at its mooring when the accident happened just before 3:00 am.

“It appears that somebody had decided that they are going to take our boat for a joyride, and this horrible event has happened,” Mr McPherson told public radio, adding that a spare set of keys was always kept on board.

The Telegraph reported that police were questioning a 31-year-old man hospitalised with non-life threatening injuries who was believed to have skippered the boat when the group went for a drinking session on the harbour.

The group appeared drunk when they were boarding the vessel about two hours before the accident and were carrying beer cartons, witnesses who were fishing at a nearby wharf told Channel Ten television. Andrew Ogle, one of those fishing, said that the revellers brushed aside warnings the boat was overloaded, saying:“We’ll be right.

Glenn Finniss, a marine police inspector, declined to speculate on the cause of the collision between the 30-foot (nine-metre) lobster boat and the 23-foot cruiser. But he said police were examining several factors including speed, alcohol, the use of navigational lights, and that the smaller cruiser was designed to carry a maximum of eight people.

“The indications are that 14 people (were) on board a 23-foot vessel,” Mr Finniss said.“That’s obviously part of the things we’re going to have to look at.

News footage showed the cruiser had sustained damage to its stern but it remained afloat and was towed back to shore by a police vessel.

The accident revived memories of another collision on the harbour in March last year, when four people died as a ferry catamaran slammed into their pleasure craft in similar dark conditions beneath the Harbour Bridge. An investigation found that accident occurred because the cruiser was not displaying navigation lights and called for the introduction of a licensing system and mandatory competency test for all boat owners.

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