SYDNEY, Oct 3 \u2014 A driver lost control and crashed his car into a crowd of rugby league fans in the eastern Australian city of Newcastle today, injuring 10 people including children, police said.<\/p>\n
Thousands of supporters had gathered to farewell local rugby league side the Newcastle Knights ahead of their grand final match against the Sydney Roosters on Sunday.<\/p>\n
But the festive environment was shattered when an 18-year-old rugby fan \u201cdriving erratically\u201d lost control of his vehicle and crashed into the crowd, police said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was revving the car, he was excited, he was a supporter, he was there for the joy of the moment,\u201d Newcastle Mayor Gavin Morris told national broadcaster ABC.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomehow he lost control of the car… and he\u2019s gone into the crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two people were in a critical condition \u2014 a five-year-old girl and 67-year-old man.<\/p>\n
Two other young children were hurt, police said.<\/p>\n
The driver had been taken into custody.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne person made a decision in a split second that put everyone at risk,\u201d said Jenny Aitchison, the roads minister for the state of New South Wales.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, \u201cMy thoughts are with everyone injured or involved in the horrible incident this morning in Newcastle\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cRugby league brings people together, and this should have been a weekend of excitement and pride for Newcastle fans,\u201d he wrote in a post on X.<\/p>\n
And Knights captain Kalyn Ponga said on Instagram: \u201cWe\u2019re thinking of you, your families and everyone in our Newcastle community.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSending our love and support.\u201d \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SYDNEY, Oct 3 \u2014 A driver lost control and crashed his car into a crowd of rugby league…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":914296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[2324,64,63,10668,4495,760,159,85,670,1080],"class_list":["post-914295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-anthony-albanese","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-newcastle","tag-newcastle-knights","tag-rugby","tag-rugby-league","tag-sports","tag-sydney","tag-sydney-roosters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914295","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=914295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/914296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=914295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=914295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=914295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}