Twins haunted by horror amputation on Hume Motorway

Alisa Sturluson swerved to avoid a head-on collision with a car as it inexplicably headed north along the southbound lanes at Pheasants Nest, shortly after 2pm Saturday. 

In her rear vision mirror she glimpsed a motorcyclist who wasn’t as lucky. She saw the man flung along the roadway, his bike somersaulting ahead of him.

The crash had taken a terrible toll, she later realised.

“He was slumped over … he wasn’t all the way off the road,” said Ms Sturluson, who stopped with her partner and her twin sister, Kirsti, to help the fallen rider. “I thought the safest thing to do would be to roll him on his side, just to help him breath.” 

“I went to grab his shoulder to push him onto his side, and I had blood all over my hands. 

“I looked in the spot and his arm was missing. Twenty metres behind his body, his arm was laying on the road. That’s when he started to wake up a bit more.” 

Driver Dashcam is believed to have captured the wayward car – a silver vehicle with an elderly woman at the wheel – in the lead-up to the collision.

The car hit several trees before coming to a rest a short distance from the injured motorcyclist.

The woman was treated for minor injuries and taken by road ambulance to Liverpool Hospital, where police have yet to speak to her. Ms Sturluson says the woman was “sitting up straight” and showing no signs of distress as their cars crossed paths. 

The injured rider, believed aged in his 50s, was airlifted to Liverpool Hospital in a serious condition. 

“He didn’t know it [his arm] was amputated at the time,” Ms Sturluson, of Bargo, told the Mercury. 

“He was pretty disorientated. He kept asking us to pull his arm out from behind his back. He said, ‘pull my arm out, it’s really sore’. 

“It was confronting. I didn’t think it affected me; I had to go to work probably an hour after that.

“On the way to work I felt quite nervous, quite sick to be on the road again. [Once there] I started crying. I had to let it all out.” 

An off-duty police officer and nurse cared for the man before paramedics arrived. He remains at hospital in a stable condition.

“I feel really terrible for him,” Ms Sturluson said. 

“He had no chance.”