A 32-year-old woman is dead and two children injured after a crash in Perth‘s south on Thursday night.
Mum-of-three Rebecca Pumphrey was killed when her Ford Festiva hatchback slammed into a power pole on Willmott Drive, Cooloongup at about 11pm.
The impact of the crash was so enormous, it cut power to 59 homes in the area, leaving residents to swelter through the night.
Heroic strangers rushed to help, pulling her 11-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son from the wreckage.
Hayden Stobbs was one of the first people on the scene and told 9News he heard a little girl’s screams for help as he approached the car.
“I heard two massive thuds and then a crash [and I’ve] come out the front to see a young girl screaming for help,” he said.
“She said ‘my mum’s been in a car accident and my brother is still stuck in the car’.
“I’m not sure if he’s broken his collar bone or if his shoulder was dislocated but he was in a high, high amount of pain.”
Off-duty nurse Maddison Clarke was also among those rushing to perform first aid.
“Basically I held a cold compress to the little boy’s head because he had some lacerations on the side and all up his arms was all cut up and everything,” she told 9News.
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“They both had whiplash.”
The two kids were taken to Perth Children’s Hospital with minor injuries and are in a stable condition. But their mum died at the scene.
“I checked her pulse and yeah she was definitely not there,” Clarke said.
The family had been visiting from Boddington, approximately 120 kilometres southeast of Coolongup.
After leaving a party, they were travelling to the children’s father’s house around 11pm before the horror crash.
Clarke alleged the little girl “noticed her mum was dozing off but she couldn’t stop anything”.
It’s understood Pumphrey had epilepsy but the cause of the tragedy is now the subject of a major crash investigation.
WA Police are appealing for information about the crash and any dashcam footage.
The girl could be released from hospital in time for Christmas, while her brother undergoes further treatment.
