one young man was killed and another critically injured<\/a> when a car travelling along Langs Road in Ascot Vale veered onto the wrong side of the road, up onto the kerb and drove up the footpath, striking pedestrians.<\/p>\nAccording to police, three men in their 20s were walking together after leaving the Melbourne Showgrounds event about 5pm when they were hit by the grey Toyota Echo, which is believed to be a rental vehicle.<\/p>\n
The driver of the car, who was arrested by an off-duty police officer, was taken to hospital under police guard last night and is expected to be interviewed today.<\/p>\n
Police said the 33-year-old driver from the Werribee area was “well known” to them, and the potential role drugs, alcohol and speed played in the collision would all be examined.<\/p>\n
Organisers of Supernova Comic Con & Gaming described themselves as “deeply saddened and distressed” by the incident in a statement posted to social media last night.<\/p>\n
They said they would continue to support all the fans coming to the event today, and would hold a minute’s silence in sympathy and solidarity for the affected families and friends at 10am before the event’s second day began.<\/p>\n
“Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected by the unspeakable tragedy that has happened on our doorstep,” the statement said.<\/p>\n
“As the matter is still under police investigation, and took place outside the showgrounds precinct, we do not have any further details at present.<\/p>\n
“As such, we will not enter into any speculation regarding this appalling situation until all the facts come to light.”<\/p>\n
Anyone who witnessed the incident, with CCTV or dash cam vision or information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Supernova Comic Con & Gaming convention will continue later today with a minute’s silence after an attendee…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[186566,130198,64,63,298967,20359,113592,298968,44,2948,62740],"class_list":{"0":"post-616001","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-ascot-vale","9":"tag-attendee","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-comic-con-death","13":"tag-comic-con","14":"tag-flemington","15":"tag-melbourne-showgrounds","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-pedestrian","18":"tag-supernova"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}