Three Taiwanese were yesterday confirmed to be among five people killed in a vehicle crash in Australia’s Victoria state on Thursday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Melbourne on Thursday night received a call from a Taiwanese man who said he had been notified by police in the town of Cobram that his landlord was killed in a three-vehicle collision in neighboring Strathmerton, the ministry said.
The man also told the office that police were seeking assistance because they suspected that some of the deceased were Taiwanese on working holidays in Australia, it said.
Photo: Screen grab from 7NEWS Australia’s YouTube channel
After the office helped confirm their identities, the ministry contacted their families and would help them make the necessary arrangements, including issuing passports so that they could travel to Australia, it said.
Office Director-General Ray Lu (呂明澤) yesterday said that family members of one of the three Taiwanese had already arrived in Australia.
Local media reported that the five people who died were the driver of a Nissan Navara utility vehicle and four passengers.
The Nissan slammed into a Mercedes-Benz and then collided with a tanker truck on a highway about 215km north of Melbourne, the reports said.
Authorities identified the driver as 62-year-old Deborah Markey, and said that the passengers were one man and three women, aged between 23 and 30.
Markey, a Cobram resident, rents out her property to foreign workers, the reports said.
Lu said it could take about a week to identify the fourth passenger, citing police and pathologists.
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