The principal of St Edmund’s College in Canberra says two teenage boys who were hit by an allegedly stolen car on Friday morning outside the school are “lucky to be alive”. Source: ABC News.
The 14 and 15-year-old students were left in a critical condition after being struck by an allegedly stolen green station wagon just after 9am.
A 31-year-old Victorian man, who allegedly didn’t stop after hitting the boys, is facing 10 charges over the incident and remains in custody.
Speaking to ABC Radio Canberra, college principal Tim Cleary said the boys were in a serious but “stable condition in intensive care” after undergoing emergency surgery.
“They’ve got, as you’d expect, some pretty severe injuries and … a long road to recovery,” Mr Cleary said.
“So certainly they’re lucky to be alive, but that’s what they will do – they are going to recover and get over this traumatic incident.”
Mr Cleary said it had been a traumatic time for their families and for the broader school community, especially the staff and students who were first on the scene.
Mr Cleary said as one of the boys’ parents drove away from dropping off his son he saw the green station wagon speed by him with a broken windscreen and turned around to help.
“I was standing there, and he helped us curb the bleeding of one of the boys who wasn’t actually his son – he didn’t realise the other person on the ground was his son,” Mr Cleary said.
“So he rendered first aid and pretty well saved the first child, and then realised his own son was on the ground.”
Mr Cleary said the boys both underwent surgery for more than eight hours on Friday, and when they regained consciousness on Saturday each asked after the other.
“It’s nice to be able to tell the boys that the first thing that they did, each of them when they woke up, was asked about the other boy,” he said.
Mr Cleary said counselling had been offered to everyone in the school community to help address the trauma of the incident.
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Canberra boys hit by allegedly stolen car ‘lucky to be alive’, St Edmund’s College principal says (By Charlotte Gore, ABC News)
