'No genuine opportunity' to prevent crash that killed two women, coroner finds

SA coroner finds 'no genuine opportunity' to prevent double-fatal Urrbrae crash Tue 30 Jun 2026 at 2:38pm In short: Senior police officer Joanne Shanahan and mother Tania McNeill were killed when Harrison Kitt ran a red light and caused a crash in Adelaide's inner south in April 2020. A coroner found Mr Kitt's erratic driving had been reported to police before the crash, but no-one was able to provide his registration number. What's next? He said SA Police now works with the Traffic Management Centre to use its cameras to identify speeding vehicles. A South Australian coroner says it is an "unfortunate truth" that there was "no genuine opportunity" for police to predict or prevent a crash that killed two women on Anzac Day in 2020. On Tuesday, State Coroner David Whittle handed down his findings into the deaths of senior police officer Joanne Shanahan and mother Tania McNeill, who were killed when Harrison Kitt ran a red light and caused the crash at the intersection of Cross and Fullarton roads at Urrbrae, in Adelaide's inner south. Mr Kitt had was experiencing his first psychotic episode and was speeding at 167 kilometres per hour at the time of the collision. In his findings, Mr Whittle said there was no "genuine opportunity" for Mr Kitt to be stopped "after the course of events had begun". "The unfortunate truth is that this event could not have been predicted, nor, as I shall find, was there any genuine opportunity to safely end Mr Kitt's behaviour after the course of events had begun,"Mr Whittle said. Mr Kitt was charged with two counts of causing death by dangerous driving and a single court of causing harm by dangerous driving over the crash, but was found not guilty due to mental incompetence in 2021. Difficulty identifying vehicle The inquest, held in July 2024, explored whether there were opportunities for SA Police to identify Mr Kitt "as being dangerous to himself and others before the collision", and if police had "the tools it needed to identify and intercept Mr Kitt, or whether improved resourcing might have prevented the deaths". It heard that Mr Kitt had been driving a silver Volkswagen ute "erratically" between Encounter Bay and Adelaide in the lead-up to the crash, and that he had been reported by several motorists. However, no-one had been able to provide the vehicle's registration number. The inquest had heard Mr Kitt was first detected by a Safe-T-Cam on the Southern Expressway about 12:41pm speeding at 187 km/h in a 100 km/h zone but the information was not provided in real time to police. Mr Whittle said that evidence provided during the inquest found the Traffic Management Centre "had not received any notification of Mr Kitt's speeding vehicle before the collision occurred". "There was, therefore, no genuine opportunity for the Traffic Management Centre to have prevented the collision,"he said. Mr Whittle added that, at that time, a "manual review of all cars that passed through" would have been needed to identify Mr Kitt's vehicle. "Had the registration number been known, it is possible that police might have been able to identify that the likely destination for the ute was Mr Kitt's home and they might have been able to intercept him during the 30 minutes he was present there," he said. "That would require extremely quick police work and it is far from certain that this could have actually been achieved in the time available." "In my view, if SAPOL had systems in place that raised an immediate alert that Mr Kitt's vehicle had travelled through the Victor Harbor Road fixed-point camera at 187 km/h and provided the registration number with the alert, SAPOL would have had a chance to identify the registered owner, identify the address of registration as a possible destination, initiate attempts at monitoring through the Traffic Management Centre and attempt to intercept the vehicle if appropriate. "In light of that evidence, I am satisfied that there was no genuine opportunity for police to prevent the collision." Changes already made Although Mr Whittle concluded that Mrs Shanahan and Mrs McNeill's deaths could not have been prevented, he recommended "strong consideration be given to implementing a system where extreme speed notifications are automatically issued by fixed-point speed cameras to SAPOL Communications Centre and to the Traffic Management Centre". "An immediate automated notification of the registration number of an excessively speeding vehicle would assist to speed up this process and allow tracking to be quickly commenced," he said. "I am satisfied that there would be great potential benefit to an automatic notification being sent to SAPOL, and also to the Traffic Management Centre which is accustomed to tracking and raising issues for the attention of emergency services." Mr Whittle said, in the wake of the crash, improvements had been to SA Police's "capabilities of identifying, locating and tracking a speeding vehicle". "I was advised that SAPOL continuously looks at ways to improve its operations and that 'the learning experience never stops'," he said. Mr Whittle said he heard evidence that upon receiving reports of a speeding vehicle from members of the public, SA Police's Communications Centre now works with the Traffic Management Centre "to utilise their camera system to locate and identify the vehicle and where possible obtain a registration number and description". Mr Whittle also expressed his condolences to Mrs Shanahan and Mrs McNeill's families. "I recognise the devastating impact on each of the families, and I acknowledge their presence throughout the inquest," he said.