The SUV’s owners are heartbroken and hope it acts as a warning to other young people.
Hours after the incident and around 18 kilometers away, in the north-eastern suburb of Doreen, Ronnie Michell discovered her wrecked car featured in the morning news.
“Six kids in hospital, six families worried about their children,” an emotional Michell told 9News.
Michell’s daughter Courtney Lister was also left in disbelief.
“I couldn’t believe it traveled that far, to be honest. What they considered a ‘bit of fun’, it seems unfortunately had to lead to such a terrible conclusion,” Lister shared with 9News.
Five boys, aged 16 to 17, and a 19-year-old woman are all in hospital with serious injuries, with two people ejected from the car as it rolled.
They are all under police guard in hospital.
“When I got shown the photo of the car, I just felt numb and sick,” Michell said.
The teens were spotted driving erratically throughout the day on Tuesday, pulling into a service station and a footy club in Doreen.
Police say there’d been a number of close calls with other cars before they crashed.
“Hopefully it is a wake-up call, but it’s as though they don’t care about any sort of consequence that could come from it,” Lister said.
“Obviously that doesn’t happen every time, where there’s a really severe car crash, but they could have hit somebody else. They could have ended someone’s life.”
The car was spotted speeding by a patrol car near Church Street in Whittlesea about 1am yesterday.
After losing sight of the car, police AirWing located the SUV about 20 minutes later, where it was allegedly speeding near Plenty Road in South Morang.
Stop sticks were successfully deployed on Bellevue Boulevard.
Police AirWing continued trailing the Haval, which allegedly continued speeding through Epping before it crashed.
Police said they were not pursuing the Haval before it crashed.
