Abigail Andersson and daughter Tully, 3 … lucky to have escaped injury
The cracked windscreen on the Andersson family’s vehicle (Photo: Abigail Andersson)

February 11, 2014

A Goodger woman and her two small children are lucky to have escaped injury when an object was thrown at their moving vehicle as she was driving home on Saturday.

Abigail Andersson told southburnett.com.au she was driving back home from Kingaroy with her two daughters – Tully, 3, and Ellenor, 6, – in the family’s SUV when a white object was thrown at the vehicle from an oncoming utility.

The object, which Abigail believes may have been a cricket ball, smashed into her windscreen at driver’s eye level.

The incident occurred on the Kingaroy-Cooyar Road at Goodger, just before Bellbird Road.

Abigail, who feared the windscreen could fall in on her, immediately pulled over and rang her husband, Dan.

She noted the time – 4:53pm – but unfortunately didn’t get a chance to see the vehicle’s registration number. However, she described it as white with a metal tray “like an old farm ute”.

And she knows that it was deliberate as she saw a hand throw the object.

“I should have tried to turn around and get the number plate,” she said.

Her husband Dan immediately came to the site of the incident and searched for the object, but with no success.

The couple also contacted Kingaroy police.

Abigail said the officer she spoke to had told her she was very lucky the object had not penetrated the windscreen and struck her.  There was also the chance that she could have lost control of the vehicle just through the shock of the strike.

“It’s right at the driver’s head height so if it came through I wouldn’t have had a chance,” Abigail said.

She said her children – who were in the back seat of the vehicle – were also upset by the incident.

“They were upset that someone would purposefully throw something at us. They’re at an age where they think everyone is good. They don’t understand why people want to do bad things.”

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This is the second incident of this type that southburnett.com.au has reported in recent months.

Last July, a motorbike rider taking part in charity ride at Moffatdale was struck by a golf ball thrown from another vehicle.

The ball, believed to have been thrown by a young boy, struck the rider on his helmet.

The impact tore his visor off and he was lucky not to have been seriously injured.

When Abigail described her incident on Facebook,  a Nanango resident said a similar incident had occurred to her “a few years ago” with an object thrown from a ute.

However, in her case the object had come through the windscreen, hitting a passenger.