Two men and a woman have been killed in a horrific head-on collision in the NSW Hunter that police say will send “ripples right through the community.”
The car and ute collided on Bengalla Road, west of Muswellbrook, just before 9.30pm on Sunday.
The 30-year-old male ute driver and the male driver and a female passenger of the Kia Carnival died at the scene.
Another passenger in the Kia, a man believed to be in his 60s, has been airlifted to John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle with life-threatening injuries.
The two passengers in the Kia were husband and wife, while the car’s male driver was the operator of a local ride-share service.
NSW Police Chief Inspector Guy Guiana told reporters on Monday that all four people involved in the crash hailed from the region.
The cause of the head-on collision remains unclear and weather is not believed to be a factor.
“It’s always tragic when you have a local person killed in an accident … of course, when there’s this many people involved, it sends ripples right through the community,” Insp Guiana said.
“The number of people killed, there’s a lot of people who knew them and that’ll have a significant impact on everybody.”