Qld: Identities of rugby car crash victims revealed

AAP General News (Australia)
08-20-2006
Qld: Identities of rugby car crash victims revealed

By Sonja Koremans

BRISBANE, Aug 20 AAP - Police have revealed the identities of two teenage rugby union
players who died when their car rolled and burst into flames on the way to a regional
grand finals day in Queensland.

They were 18-year-old Carl James McNulty and 19-year-old Marcus Colin MacDonald, both
of Goondiwindi, west of Brisbane, police say.

Their deaths, and a car accident which killed a 31-year-old man in Queensland's north,
has brought the weekend road toll to three.

The footballers from the Goondiwindi Emus club were driving to Toowoomba with three
other team-mates when their car left the road on the Gore Highway near Millmerran at around
10.30am (AEST) yesterday.

The three other men, all aged 18, escaped before the car was incinerated.

Two of the men were taken to Millmerran Hospital with minor facial burns, the other
was airlifted to the Royal Brisbane Hospital with serious burns to 20 per cent of his
chest, arms and abdomen.

Police said accidents were common on the long, flat strip of road.

However, a police spokesman said it is not known what caused the single-vehicle accident.

"We will interview witnesses and continue to investigate the scene and it may take
several weeks to establish the cause," the police spokesman says.

The men who died had been travelling in the back seat, he says.

Elsewhere, a 31-year-old Rockhampton man died after being struck by a car at the intersection
of Derby and George streets around 1am (AEST) today, police say.

A 47-year-old man is assisting police with their inquiries.

In Brisbane, three cyclists were injured when a car clipped a bike in a group of 13
riders, creating a domino effect, police say.

One of the men suffered several broken bones while a man and a woman received cuts
and bruising, a police spokesman says.

The car had attempted to overtake the group on a highway exit at Carseldine in Brisbane's
north, he said.

AAP sjk/ch/it/cjh

KEYWORD: TOLL QLD NIGHTLEAD

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