{"id":914361,"date":"2026-10-03T06:42:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T06:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/914361\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T06:42:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T06:42:12","slug":"australia-car-crashes-into-rugby-fans-10-injured","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/914361\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia: Car crashes into rugby fans, 10 injured"},"content":{"rendered":"

A car drove into a crowd of rugby league supporters in the eastern\u00a0Australian<\/a> city of Newcastle on Saturday after its driver appeared to lose control, leaving at least 10\u00a0people injured, authorities said.<\/p>\n

Several children were reported to be among the wounded.<\/p>\n

Two of the injured were in a critical condition, including a 5-year-old girl and a 67-year-old man, New South Wales officials said.<\/p>\n

What do we know about the car crash in Australia?<\/p>\n

The incident occurred in Newcastle’s Wallsend \u200csuburb, situated some 110 kilometers\u00a0(68 miles) north of\u00a0Sydney.<\/p>\n

Fans had gathered on the streets to cheer on the Newcastle Knights rugby<\/a>\u00a0team who were leaving for the National Rugby League grand final against the Sydney Roosters, slated to be held in \u200bSydney on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Local reports cited the police as identifying the driver as an 18-year-old man, who was arrested and taken to the hospital for mandatory testing.<\/p>\n

Driver ‘lost control’<\/p>\n

Newcastle Mayor Gavin Morris said in televised remarks that the driver was a rugby fan and that he lost control of his vehicle.<\/p>\n

“He was revving the car, he was excited, he was a supporter, he was there for the joy of the moment,” Morris told Australian broadcaster ABC.<\/p>\n

“Somehow he lost control of the car … and he’s gone into the crowd.”<\/p>\n

Police said\u00a0they were probing the incident and initial inquiries indicated it was not terrorism-related.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the incident was “horrible.”<\/p>\n

“Rugby league brings people together, and this should have been a weekend of excitement and pride for Newcastle fans,” he said in a statement on X.<\/p>\n

Edited by: Natalie Muller
If you rely on our team for trusted reporting, please take a moment to select us as your Preferred Source on Google\u00a0<\/a>so you’ll always see our verified news first.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A car drove into a crowd of rugby league supporters in the eastern\u00a0Australian city of Newcastle on Saturday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":914362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-914361","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\/914361","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=914361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/914362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=914361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=914361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=914361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}