{"id":754981,"date":"2026-06-23T12:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T12:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/754981\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T12:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T12:07:11","slug":"mornington-peninsula-freeway-teens-jump-freeway-barriers-as-stolen-car-bursts-into-flames","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/754981\/","title":{"rendered":"Mornington Peninsula Freeway: Teens jump freeway barriers as stolen car bursts into flames"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two teenagers are on the run after a stolen car was seen speeding the wrong way down a busy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nine.com.au\/topic\/melbourne-ch7\" class=\"sc-jNzrEP eIMCEl\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Melbourne<\/a> freeway before it burst into flames in front of terrified motorists.<\/p>\n<p>Police were tracking a stolen car in Carnegie on Tuesday afternoon before it was seen driving in convoy with another vehicle on the Moorooduc Highway.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/56efecc72272186f1fba20477bab6dc9bbfd01d8eaacbc675ebcbc88b93597cd.jpeg\"  width=\"100%\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"_0b53bae146db0b62 _7475dd3391ee1518\" style=\"--text-color:var(--color-text-secondary)\">The car erupted in flames on the Mornington Peninsula Freeway near Lower Dandenong Road.\u00a09News<\/p>\n<p>Police deployed stop sticks on Centre Dandenong Road, but the car continued without front tires to the Mornington Peninsula Freeway.<\/p>\n<p>Witnesses claim it was speeding down the wrong side of the freeway.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought I was seeing things and the next minute it was getting closer and there was a car in front of me, so we both started flashing our lights,\u201d witness Ben Tawfilis said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen the car slammed into the barrier on the left and then there were cops coming from the opposite [direction], from our way as well.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was chaos, if it wasn\u2019t for the car in front of me, I wouldn\u2019t be here talking to you now.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have been shaking the whole time, I came home safely, gave my wife and kids a hug.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Witnesses say they saw two males run from the car and climb over freeway barriers and down an embankment, where police said they fled in another stolen vehicle.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/a9bb6225c7370a69426da2c45068bce93c52092edf9f6ce77b89129a6ed206f2.png\"  width=\"100%\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"_0b53bae146db0b62 _7475dd3391ee1518\" style=\"--text-color:var(--color-text-secondary)\">Police cordoned off the Mornington Peninsula Freeway in both directions between Centre Dandenong Road and Governor Road to allow firefighters to extinguish the blaze.\u00a09News<\/p>\n<p>Both vehicles are believed to have been stolen from Rosebud earlier in the afternoon, police said.<\/p>\n<p>The Mornington Peninsula Freeway was closed in both directions between Centre Dandenong Road and Governor Road for several hours. <\/p>\n<p>Nobody was injured.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two teenagers are on the run after a stolen car was seen speeding the wrong way down a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":754982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-754981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754981","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=754981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/754982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}