UPDATE: A family continues to hold a bedside vigil for a baby girl who suffered life-threatening head injuries when a car ploughed through her family’s Geelong home on Sunday night.
Four-month-old Isabelle was sleeping with her parents, Natalie and Dylan, about 8.30pm when a car careered into the bedroom of their Boundary Road home in the suburb of Breakwater.
The baby suffered life-threatening head injuries. She was initially taken to Geelong Hospital, but was later flown to the Royal Children’s Hospital in a critical condition, where it is understood she was placed in an induced coma.
Her mother was also taken to Geelong Hospital with minor injuries. She was released from hospital on Monday morning and rushed to Melbourne to be by her daughter’s hospital bedside.
Isabelle’s grandfather Alfred Grech, who spoke to the media on Monday, described Isabelle as a “beautiful” baby.
“This is not a nice thing to anybody, she’s so beautiful,” he told News Corp.
“My daughter, they put a collar on her neck, and then the baby, it was like a coma.”
Police said it appeared the male driver of a Holden Commodore failed to negotiate a roundabout at the corner of Fellmongers Road and Boundary Road in Breakwater and ploughed through a fence, before crashing into the bedroom.
The 20-year-old driver, from Grovedale, was taken to Geelong Hospital where he remained under police guard on Monday.
Detective Sergeant Andrew Kilpatrick told Channel Nine it was unclear what caused the driver to lose control at the roundabout.
“The intersection is well lit … there’s nothing we can see here, with road conditions and weather conditions, that would have contributed to the accident,” he said on Sunday night.
Little remains of the front bedroom of the family’s home, bar a pile of broken plasterboard and bricks. Structural support beams were put in place on Monday to prevent the house collapsing.
Anyone with any information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
This story first appeared in The Age
