by Steve Deeks
I looked for my colleague who I had never met before and through a process of elimination began to weigh up which one she was. Just as I had narrowed it down to a select few (female’s not holding a microphone or camera) a load of glittering cheerleaders with permanent plastic smiles on their faces suddenly burst out of the tunnel. Manoeuvring in and out of the press, stopping to rub pom-poms into the faces of a select few unsuspecting individuals – me being one of them. They bounced around for a bit before stopping to perform a guard of honour for the players.
I reached out to the woman I thought maybe my colleague. I had guessed right. She had been there all day; during the match, soaking up the post match celebrations and then waiting around for hours for the players to return. As the speeches began so did the rain. Heavily too. My attempts at writing down their immortal words was severely impinged by my soaking wet notepad, with my ball point pen mostly ripping through the paper but for the odd word.
My concerns that my entire reason for being sent to cover the event had proved to be one big exercise in pointlessness were, though, at least softened when my colleague revealed she had managed to take down what was said, thanks to her trusty high tech phone, therefore removing the unforgiving obstacle of useless pen and drenched paper. Her presence, though, did make me wonder what the hell I was doing there if she was doing all the work.
After the players went back inside my colleague announced she was going home after an exhausting 11-hour day at the stadium. I was supposed to be meeting photographer Brad somewhere. Quite a few members of the press had left the stage area while some fans were also now leaving. Not sure where I was meeting my colleague I decided to hang around for a bit. There were still lots of fans pitch-side. And then, minutes later, it became clear why as manager Wayne Bennett (the national team’s most successful ever coach) came out to personally greet fans.
Once Bennett had nearly finished his lap of embracing fans and posing for pictures, a female reporter from a TV station jumped in amongst the carnage for a live interview and threw a few sycophantic questions in his direction. “Look around you and what you’ve done for these people, how proud do you feel?” she shouted in delirium, with the camera stuffed right in her face, before turning to Bennett. Standing around awkwardly on my own with nothing to do, knowing that the copy from the speeches had already been submitted, I decided I’d had enough of looking like a lemon and took matters into my own hands.
Edging closer to the scrum of fans and television crew I expertly managed to squeeze alongside the TV reporter. Just as she opened her mouth to ask another cheese-ridden question I decided to momentarily hijack the interview. “So Wayne, this must be the best moment of your career?” I asked, knowing full well this was probably not the case having earlier being told by a fan he had won numerous Grand Finals with his beloved home-town team and masterminded, against all the odds, a world championship for New Zealand. “Yeah it’s right up there,” the dour coach diplomatically replied.
“Not the best then?” I hit back sharply, pushing to get a definitive answer.
He didn’t look too impressed, particularly as he was still live on television and surrounded by ecstatic home fans. “It’s up there,” he growled, before looking curiously at me, no doubt wondering who this annoying Pommie putting a downer on proceedings was.
Unperturbed by his frostiness I continued my interrogation, going for the jugular. “Will you be extending your contract?” I queried. Again, one of the fans I had been chatting to earlier had given me some valuable information, revealing that Bennett was homesick and wanted to return to Queensland where he was from. With this in mind, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to ask such a question. After all, he owed it to the fans to come clean about his intentions. “I’ve got 12-months left on my deal so we’ll see what happens,” he cautiously retorted.
“So you are staying for now? But it’s unlikely you’ll be staying beyond that then?” I noticed the TV reporter looking at me in morbid curiosity as I took up the mantle, presumably aghast at my particular line of questioning toward the highly esteemed coach who had, at long last, ended the St George Dragons’ choker tag, following numerous defeats in previous finals.
The female reporter seemed to be shuddering as I proceeded with my tasty questions to the game’s all time greatest manager, leaving him in the rather awkward predicament of not wanting to say the wrong thing and aggravate all his idolising fans, having just brought home the title for the first time in over 30 years. “We’ll have to see,” he answered, somewhat reluctantly, not giving anything way over his future. But, clearly, it was hardly the ringing endorsement of his commitment to the future of the club and normally such responses mean they’ll be leaving soon, which, as it turned out, was exactly the case with Bennett leaving after the following season).
Following our frosty chat, I thanked the coach nonetheless and let him finish signing autographs in peace as I fiddled on my phone to find out where to meet Brad. A short while later, as I made my way out of the tunnel into the car park, I came head on with Bennett after he had finished his media duties. There was an awkward silence as we briefly made eye contact before scuttling past each other with no acknowledgement. “That was brave of you back there,” a fellow member of the media said when I had made it outside to the car park. “Bennett’s gone on record as saying he doesn’t like dealing with the media…I’m sure his feelings won’t have changed after your little chat with him.”
“Just doing my job,” I quipped.
I made my way down the street and eventually saw Brad and Paul standing on a verge getting close-up shots and footage of fans. I went over and mingled for a while before we made our way to a spot outside the clubhouse. The queue to get in was enormous and stretched right down the road. But having everything we needed we decided to call it a night and made our way to the car park around the back.
Just as we were leaving, though, we got wind of some trouble inside the clubhouse. A voice on the ambulance scanner demanded urgent assistance at the venue. It sounded serious. Without a second’s thought we raced back to the scene to see what, if anything, was happening.
The mood of fans had turned from one of ecstasy to one of menace and disbelief as police fought to maintain order. They were preventing anyone else entering the club while evacuating people as quickly as possible. Several ambulances fought their way to the front entrance as people pushed to see what had happened. Emotions were running high as word began to spread of a riot between fans and police, with a man reportedly critically injured after being tasered. But, incredibly, there was soon talk the man had already died. In amongst the chaos and confusion Brad and Paul had pushed their way inside, capturing shots and footage of CPR being administered on the individual inside the ambulance.
I stood around listening to conversations to gage what had happened, with many too shocked and distraught to talk. Others had flown into a blind rage and were making their feelings known, with police forced to pin down the protagonists, while swarming around other volatile men seemingly ready to explode. Five officers wrestled one bulky shaven haired individual to the floor before giving him a helping hand into the back of a riot truck, with all the ease of pushing a giant rock.
Moments later I overheard a policeman speaking with someone in the crowd, “Something very bad has happened.” But that’s as far as he would go. I relayed the messages back to the newsdesk, but without an official statement it couldn’t be confirmed whether than man really had died yet or not. “Mate, it didn’t look good at all,” Paul announced defiantly. The rain came pouring down as police struggled to contain the ugly scenes descending into a mass brawl, with many blaming the authority for what happened without really knowing the details. Essentially, they had been accused of over zealous policing, especially with regard to the deployment of their taser gun.
As things eventually calmed we slowly made our way to the car park, stunned that a night of such historic celebration could turn so quickly to despair and
tragedy, before leaving. Out of the blue we had stumbled across a major story. I was certain that my colleague, who had been covering the celebrations for most of the day, wouldn’t have been delighted that all her hard work would now suddenly be largely overlooked. Once again I had been in the right place at the right time; or the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on how you see it.
The next day the news was splashed prominently across page three of the newspaper. At the time of going to press, though, we couldn’t reveal whether the victim had died. But, inevitably, his demise was confirmed later that day, opening up a heated national debate on officers’ use of taser guns, which had been attributed to other recent deaths when engaged by cops facing danger.
In England only specially trained officers carry tasers, which are only supposed to be used when facing extreme physical threats – and even then they are rarely deployed, such as with the London riots – so to see policemen carrying them on the streets, along with the customary handgun, did come as something of a surprise to me in Australia. Rather than engendering a feeling of security, they had the reverse affect of making you feel like you were in a war zone as far as I was concerned.
Chapter 15 – The streets
I had seen many disturbing things on the night shifts but nothing could ever match the surrealism of seeing a dead body. This happened officially on three occasions, while there were many other occasions where people were taken to hospital in a critical condition, though I’m sure in some of these instances they were already deceased.
Working through the night was certainly not for the faint hearted, particularly when turning up to an incident to see a cover being placed over a body. The first time this happened was following a crash out west. A man had been hit by a car and thrown 60 yards down a dual carriageway. The strange thing about this accident was that his shoes had flown off following the impact with both coming to rest side by side on a narrow pillar of someone’s wall.
On this particular occasion it also struck me that the traffic police had only closed one lane on the side of the road where the collision took place, therefore allowing slow moving cars to gently glide past while gawping out of their windows at a body, which although covered, was no more than a few feet away from them.
As it turned out, so we were told, they were waiting for someone from the Coroner’s Office to do the necessaries. But, in any event, I wasn’t convinced that having a corpse in full view of passing motorists, right outside people’s driveways for an entire evening was the best decision.
Of course, Dan was capturing every possible angle he could of the incident, before pouncing for some quick snaps as officers momentarily lifted the blanket to take official shots of the body. “So sad,” he said, letting out a sigh before quickly changing topic, “I’m feeling a bit peckish,” giving me that look indicating he was ready to leave. However, I was in the middle of talking to a couple of shocked locals, one of whom was a one-legged man who had lost his limb following a motorcycle crash. Understandably he could relate to the tragic incident that had just occurred. However, he did seem to bring every conversation back to his accident and the fact he now had an artificial leg and a walking stick. Nonetheless, I offered him the courtesy of listening but Dan’s need for food meant he was in no mood for idle chat. “That could have been me lying dead all those years ago. I least I only lost a leg,” the old man announced.
“That looks like a good bit of kit,” Dan, turning to a teenager sitting on his shiny new pushbike, said bluntly, ignoring the poor old man’s comment.
Maybe Dan was too long in the tooth with the job to really care or maybe he was just hungry but as I looked at the picture of the deceased I pondered how this man, about my age, would have been normally going about his evening before suddenly being wiped out. It was a sobering thought. Just then I felt a prod on my shoulder, snapping me out of my deep thought. “Let’s go to Mackers (McDonald’s), I’m starving,” Dan flicked his head. And off we went.
I didn’t have to wait long before coming across the next morbid scene - a fatal stabbing in an inner city street the following week. Apart from the darkness our view was obscured somewhat by the array of parked cars and a crime scene keeping us well back. Nonetheless, Dan had stoically managed to grab some shots, which he showed me. “What a shame,” he said. Although it appeared there had been a violent confrontation we eventually discovered that in fact the individual had plunged a knife into his own chest for reasons best known to himself.
Above all things on this shift, I had learnt just how many individuals absolutely hated life. And people were getting so imaginative when going about ending it too, it seemed. People were now setting themselves on fire or, as in this case, sinking a seven inch army knife into their own chest. It didn’t leave you with much doubt about their intentions.
The same has to be said with regard to getting hit by a train. Having heard of an incident at a small station in the southern suburbs, we raced down there to see what had happened, with a suicide inevitably assumed. We went up the stairs, before being forced to stop at the crime scene tape peering down over the track where we could see a person covered. Such situations were so grim that a kind of black humour had to be deployed to lighten the depressing nature of it all. I clocked that the train had finally come to a halt a few hundred yards further down the line and had one of the man’s trainers by the side of it. The other one was below us, by his body. The disparity between the two shoes gave a wincing impression of the force of impact.
Surprisingly, it transpired, the victim was not attempting to commit suicide but had in fact been trying to evade ticket inspectors by crossing the track when he fell and got stuck on the track. This unfortunate set of circumstances actually meant the story was more likely to be published than had it just been another suicide from someone jumping in front of a train: a sombre reflection on how many people choose to end their life in this way.
And while some had successfully killed themselves others were not so fortunate. During one night shift I turned up to an accident where a man had been hit and dragged underneath a car for about 40 yards. I crossed over the road and headed for the pub where revellers had congregated outside as they watched in horror at events. On my way over the street, as I was looking to my side where the ambulance was, I accidentally walked through a small puddle of blood from the impact. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” a hostile female shouted. I looked up to see a purple-faced policewoman storming towards me. “Sorry didn’t see that there,” I replied sheepishly on looking down at my foot.
“Get the bloody hell off the road.”
But then, on realising I had done nothing wrong, I hit back. “There’s no crime scene is there?” She scowled back at me, perhaps realising there was nothing stopping people walking through the road and inadvertently distorting the evidence. In any event, I decided she may not be the best person for me to speak to in attempting to discover what had taken place, so instead I walked in the opposite direction down the pavement.
Pretending to mind my own business I listened in to an eyewitness talking with a cop. Once they were finished I grabbed the person and got the gossip. Obviously I’d get nothing out of the police. It turned out the injured man had thrown himself into the path of a car after a variety of women – the whole pub it seemed – had spurned his seedy advances. “He was going up to anything with a skirt and then doing his best to lift it up which didn’t go down well,” the witness explained. “Maybe he was hoping for a bit of sympathy by jumping in front of the car. That’s a bit ordinary though.”
It must have been the season for men leaping in front of cars having been rejected by women, as during the following shift there was an uncanny resemblance to the previous week: besotted man makes play for women, who politely turn him down, prompting man to jump in front of a two-tonne piece of metal travelling at 40kmh. The new photographer, Shane , was starting to think this was a regular Saturday night event.
On this occasion we pulled
up as fire crews battled to lift the taxi that had ploughed into the man, who was trapped underneath the front of the car. Shane was manfully going about his work when a few drunkards took exception to his snapping. “You’re fucking sick,” one snarling member of the public shouted before shoving my colleague.
“I don’t tell you how to do your job, so don’t tell me how to do mine,” Shane , angrily waving his finger hit back. A fair point, I thought, as I watched close by ready to step in. Only if it became absolutely necessary, of course. Until then I would maintain the appearance of a random bystander, especially as he seemed to have things under control.
A few minutes later, once Shane was out the way, I found myself talking to the enraged individual who hit out at my colleague. “I can’t believe those people, what scum,” he spewed.
I nodded agreeably. “Yeah I know what you mean.”
“It shouldn’t be allowed.”
I nodded some more. “Yeah you’re right. So…you saw the crash?” And just like that I had my eyewitness quotes. I made the pragmatic decision along time ago that where drunk maniacs were concerned, who hated my profession, it was often of greater benefit for all concerned not to mention what I was doing at the scene, letting them naturally assume I was merely a passer-by. This way I got the information without becoming embroiled in a needless punch-up.
Standing around in the background keeping an eye on developments I spotted an opportunity to speak with the unfortunate taxi driver who’d hit the man. Understandably, though, on approaching him it quickly became apparent he was in a state of shock and could barely get any words out. I then strolled over and stood nearby, but facing the other way, to the injured man’s group of friends and earwigged their conversation. “Why would he do this?” one girl sobbed. Listening intently I managed to get some details before hearing an officer say he was conscious and amazingly would be ok. Despite the difficulty of lifting the injured man, eventually the emergency crews managed to free him.
