The grief of losing a loved one is unforgettable and for Regis and Marita Roussell, there is pain and a tightness in their chest after their son Danny was lost to an accident at Belgrave-Hallam Road.
The tragic incident on 15 January unfurled after a Ford ute veered into the path of a Mazda sedan after overtaking two vehicles, both subsequently losing control.
It just so happened that Danny Roussel, the 33-year-old son of Regis and Marita was on his way home from his usual routine run at Frog Hollow Reserve.
Just before 3:00pm, he was struck and killed.
Both Regis, the father, and Marita, the mother, described the loss as horrific and life-changing.
Regis recalled the day they heard the news, he recalled that when Marita heard it, “she was really lost”.
“They had to ring an ambulance for her when we were at the police station, she was just all over the floor and it was, it was grief in its rawest form.
“We heard the news, and we had an inkling, but then it became the final nail in the coffin,” he said.
Danny loved everything fitness, he held a PhD in physiotherapy and had been in the profession for well over a decade.
Marita said that her son “lived for his fitness”.
“He jogged every single day, if not gym, he would jog, or both, and on weekends, he’d be up at you know, 5:30am, he was a very active guy,” she said.
The love from others has been overwhelming, according to the family, with family and friends showing and voicing their support.
Nevertheless, the family is still “not coping”.
“I was at counselling today, and Marita had a visit to her psychiatrist on Tuesday, that’s what we have to go through non-stop,” Regis said.
Both lamented on the loss, that with Danny still living at home, it felt emptier than before as the family never grew tired of each other, of the busyness of the home.
Their eldest daughter, Lisa, is also grieving, and for Marita, it felt as if the family had been given a “life sentence”.
“She’s not coping, and Danny still lived at home, so we were a close family, very close,” they both said.
“We miss him you know? Him walking up and down the area, we still see his things around, and we’re kind of just waiting for him to come through the door after his run.”
Close family friend Charlotte Cox shares the family’s pain and has pledged to herself and them to be their voice of change.
After hearing the news, and seeing the support from friends and peers at work online, Charlotte felt that something could be done.
“What we were discussing was that we were concerned about where the barriers on that road are placed,” she said.
“There’s no protection between the edge of the road and the footpath.
“So I would think that the State Government have a duty of care, that if they were putting a footpath beside a main road, there should be some form of protection for pedestrians, runners, or someone walking their child.”
While Marita couldn’t find it within herself to visit the site of the accident, Regis did, and from what he saw, it wasn’t difficult to surmise that “it’s very dangerous”.
“Where Danny was jogging, it’s very close to the road, when some car goes past, you can feel the wind that it creates,” he said.
For them, it was simple – change the speed limit.
The family is aware that other traffic calming devices are out of the question, considering the arterial nature of the road, but at the same time, there seems to be no hope when it comes to changing people’s behaviour on dangerous driving.
“You can’t change silly people’s minds,” they all said.
“Someone wanted to see how fast their car could do, so take it somewhere else, not where people are going to be.
“I mean, at Sandown Racecourse you can pay to use the course, to race the car.
“So you can do that, but when you drive, clip another car, turn over and kill an innocent person?
“Danny’s life is gone.”
Growing up, it seemed to be destiny that Danny involved himself with all things active, being an avid Geelong Cats supporter since birth – a family trait according to Regis – he found himself engrossed in footy.
While he played all kinds of sports, from cricket to soccer, he always found himself on the oval field, winning the local premiership when he played for the under-16s in Noble Park.
“Everyone loved Danny, even his friends, they come here now, and they adored him, everyone, he just had this charisma on him,” both parents said.
“It was difficult for his friends to hear the news, they loved him, and even his boss came and they said they still couldn’t believe it.
“It shows how much he meant to them, to the people.”
Charlotte recalled that Danny was the “kind of person who gave so much of his time to so many people, but didn’t expect anything back”.
Danny graduated with a Bachelor of Science at Melbourne University in 2015, and in the break, took his one last leap of freedom to visit the United States with Charlotte’s family, before returning to become a full-time physiotherapist.
Charlotte, alongside the family’s eldest daughter Lisa, is advocating for change, and hopes are in the air as she’s expecting to meet with local Narre Warren North MP Belinda Wilson in the coming weeks.
“There’s hard work for these changes to be made, and we want that barrier moved,” she said.
“The speed limit to be reduced as well, because the pedestrians need to be protected.”
When asked how the family deals with the grief, Regis and Marita simply said “we can’t”.
“We all sit here, in the living room, my daughter would sit opposite us, and we just sort of look at each other.
“We’re still in shock, I don’t know, we don’t say much, the TV’s going in the background but we’re not there.
“I mean, we’re here, but life is gone, that’s the only way to explain it.”
