A truck driver has testified that he saw a car “acting suspiciously” on September 12, 2014, the day William Tyrrell disappeared on the New South Wales mid-north coast.
The investigation into the toddler’s disappearance entered its third day Wednesday, with truck driver Peter Bashkurt saying he saw a black Toyota Camry twice on the day three-year-old Tyrrell disappeared.
Bashkurt was due to collect a yellow excavator from the suburb of Kendal that day. He said he stopped in the morning in the neighboring town of Kew, where he saw the Camry for the first time.
He said the car “came to my attention” because it was driving erratically and at one point stopped “too close” in front of him.
“Something must have triggered it. [the woman driving the car] Do this. I actually backed out from behind her because she was so close to me that I had to back away a little. This is a bit strange to me.
“I don’t know what prompted her to move from where she was. She didn’t have to come and park in front of me,” he said.
He saw the car again in Kendal, where he saw the woman coming out of a shop there and said he believed she was “killing time” there.
“On that day you were in Kendal and saw a car that you thought was acting suspiciously?” asked counsel assisting Gerard Craddock SC.
“Correct,” Bashkurt replied.
But his observations of the car were inconsistent with a theory outlined by police on the first day of the trial, which said Tyrrell’s adoptive mother used her mother’s gray Mazda3 to dispose of the boy’s body.
The adoptive mother has always denied having anything to do with William’s disappearance.
Craddock, who opened the fifth round of the investigation on Monday, said police now believe the boy’s adoptive mother found him dead after falling from the balcony of his adoptive grandmother Kendall’s property.
Detectives believe she then informed neighbors that William was missing before driving down the road and dumping his body in bushes. It was only then that she dialed triple zero, investigators theorize.
Throughout the week, the inquest heard from experts, including forensic anthropologist Dr Jennifer Menzies, who said she was unsure whether Tyrrell’s bones would have been preserved had they been in the area police searched.
“I cannot confirm whether his remains will be preserved,” she told the court on Tuesday. “I have not visited the evidence collection site.”
The court also heard testimony Tuesday from dog handlers who testified there was no way a three-year-old could have made it through the vegetation surrounding the Kendall property where he was last seen.
In 2021, police conducted an intensive search of the targeted area downstream of the property in the hope of finding any clues as to what happened to Tyrrell.
However, despite a decade-long investigation involving hundreds of people involved and dozens of searches, no trace of the boy has been found.
The investigation continues.
– with AAP
