logo
Disturbing sight leaves Aussies speechless during work commute in Melbourne: 'Wow'

Disturbing sight leaves Aussies speechless during work commute in Melbourne: 'Wow'

Daily Mail​4 days ago
Disturbing footage captured the moment a woman injected herself with drugs in broad daylight in front of passersby.
A stunned motorist recorded the unbelievable act unfold outside the Nando's on Clarendon Street, in South Melbourne, on Tuesday morning.
The woman squatted behind a car parked on the side of the busy road with her sleeve rolled up and a needle in her arm.
She appeared unbothered as motorists drove past her on their morning commute to work.
The woman finished shooting up, looked around, and then began to collect her things before leaving the scene.
The footage was shared to TikTok along with the caption: 'South Melbourne - who needs coffee.'
Social media users were left completely speechless by the video.
'Wow,' one wrote.
Another added: 'Sad.'
The unsettling footage comes just months after a passenger was spotted openly smoking a 'crack pipe' on a packed tram during rush hour in May.
The man brazenly lit up the contraband on the 58 tram line headed to West Coburg, a northern Melbourne suburb.
Many of the passengers around him were children.
A report released in October 2024 showed that 547 Victorians died from drug overdoses in 2023.
Men are on average twice as likely as women to die from overdose, and people aged between 35 and 54 are most at risk.
Metropolitan Melbourne accounts for approximately three-quarters of overdose deaths.
The figures, released by the Coroners Court of Victoria, has barely budged from the 550 overdose deaths recorded in 2022, which was the highest annual number in the past decade.
In 2023, the drug contributing to the most overdose deaths was the sedative diazepam - commonly marketed under the brand Valium - which accounted for 213 deaths, followed by heroin (204), methamphetamine (164), alcohol (153) and the painkiller pregabalin (78) which is marketed under Lyrica.
The annual number of methamphetamine-involved overdose deaths in Victoria more than tripled between 2014 and 2023 from 53 to 164 deaths.
The percentage of these deaths that involved methamphetamine alone was 15.5 per cent while 84.5 percent involved other drugs.
Judge John Cain, the Victorian State Coroner said: 'It is deeply troubling that 547 Victorians lost their lives to overdose last year.
'These deaths are preventable and we must strengthen our public health response and increase access to supports and treatment.
'Drug-related harms are complex and are driven by a variety of factors including changes in drug use, availability and regulation.
'That is why coronial data is so integral to understanding how best to target resources and save lives.'
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

These brothers grew up revering their great-uncle Bill. Then the full story came out
These brothers grew up revering their great-uncle Bill. Then the full story came out

The Guardian

time5 hours ago

  • The Guardian

These brothers grew up revering their great-uncle Bill. Then the full story came out

Warning: This article contains historical records that use racist and offensive language, and descriptions of events that will be distressing to some readers. It also contains references to Indigenous Australians who have died Malcolm McKinnon remembers poking around under Great-Uncle Bill's big old house in Brisbane while the adults were having afternoon tea. Once he found a pile of rusty old chains. Some had big loops, one was a breastplate of some kind. He thought they looked strange. Malcolm's brother Ross, 62, also remembers seeing the chains under Bill's old Queenslander. 'They were too big to be handcuffs,' Ross says, 'but as kids we didn't think about it any more than that.' The boys grew up hearing about how Bill had been a famous police officer on the frontier in the Northern Territory. 'Bill was seen in the family as a bit of a legend,' Malcolm, now 69, says. 'He was involved in the Petrov affair, he was active during Cyclone Tracy, he was the last cop who rode a camel.' Much later, they realised there was another side to the story. The chains had been for capturing and imprisoning Aboriginal people. By the neck. A fuller picture of Constable Bill McKinnon's policing career has emerged – and it has been confronting, revelatory and life-changing for Malcolm, Ross and their youngest brother, Alistair. In 1934 McKinnon shot and killed an Aboriginal man named Yukun at Uluru. He told an inquiry it was accidental and he was exonerated but almost 80 years later it emerged – via the discovery of his diary – that he had indeed 'fired to hit' Yukun. He is not the only one to have concealed his actions from scrutiny. Guardian Australia has uncovered the diary of a Western Australian colonist called Major Logue who used a Masonic code to write about the killings of at least 19 Aboriginal people around Geraldton between 1851 and 1853. These exploits were written about by the colonists themselves, which makes it difficult for descendants and their extended families to dismiss them. Yet some still have concerns about publicising these records. Logue's diaries are being prepared for publication but the historian who has worked on them told Guardian Australia the coded entries are being deliberately left out, according to the preference of the direct descendant who holds the originals. Sign up: AU Breaking News email 'To protect the person who holds the diaries we felt it was … expedient, perhaps, to not have that in writing. Everyone knows they did it,' Nan Broad says. 'But there's nothing in writing, and we prefer nothing to be in writing.' Theona Councillor, who says she and Naaguja Yamatji families represent the 'other side of the shield', believes truth has a way of making itself known. 'Truth will always uncover itself,' she says. 'It wants to come out. And that blood needs to be heard. That blood is calling out, the blood of my people. 'It happened 170 years ago but it feels like yesterday for me. And the way that people are hiding their records, it feels like yesterday for them too, by the sounds of it.' Truth is vital for healing, she says, to allow Naaguja Yamatji and settler descendants to come together for the first time as equals and confront their bloody history with honesty. Only then can the scales of denial begin to fall. 'Go back to the beginning, and be brave,' she says. 'We are not a nation of weaklings. We can handle the truth.' In 2018 Guardian Australia's series documenting the frontier violence of Australia's colonial past, The Killing Times, revealed a confronting picture of the scale of the massacres – and the involvement of government forces in an overwhelming number of them. As part of that series we brought together families grappling with their 'side' of that history, some of them meeting for the first time. The Descendants builds on that foundation. Families from over Australia are coming to terms in different ways with the real-life challenges of truth telling. For them, this work is real, personal and local. There are no guidelines. Uncovering the truth comes with the risk of family estrangement. It can lead to denial and indifference. It can also be a liberation. Some descendants of perpetrator families are challenging what they call 'colonial silence'. In Geraldton Bruce Baskerville, a historian and descendant of the Criddle family who took part in the Bootenal massacre of 1854, talks about accepting that he has an ancestor who was a 'cog in the machinery of imperial governance' – and that he has materially benefited from the dispossession of others. 'I know that I'm a beneficiary of all of that,' he says. 'My life, all the food I've ever eaten, that's been grown here, the education that I had, all of that's all been paid for, from that. That's how that wealth was created.' George Criddle, who has spent years working between colonist and Yamatji families to break the silence, says settler families have to 'unlearn' their understanding of history: 'There's a lot of entrenched ideas about who tells the story, and there's a lot of white families who believe they are the storytellers, and that their side of the truth is the right side.' Prof Mark McKenna, another historian, spent years investigating the shooting of Yukun for his book Return to Uluru. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion Yukun endured further indignity after death. The 1935 board of inquiry exhumed his remains and took them to Adelaide. Prompted by McKenna's book, a forensic search was made for them but only Yukun's skull could be located, in the South Australian Museum, in 2019. He was laid to rest in a deep, narrow grave in 2022. A small cross marks the spot near the Mutitjulu waterhole. Ross, Alistair and Alistair's wife, Ruth, went to Uluru for the repatriation. They stood quietly to one side of the ceremony, unsure how they'd be received. But they were welcomed, literally embraced. It felt like a family funeral. 'It was a privilege to be there,' Ross says. The brothers have met in Melbourne on a blustery winter day to talk about their family legacy. Alistair says their parents would have been proud of them for representing the McKinnons. Their parents believed in the importance of public service, of doing right by others. 'It was incredibly enriching,' Alistair says. To other families who might be fearing facing up to the actions of their ancestors, he says: 'Embrace it. Do it.' 'The experience was so life-changing, and when we saw how much it meant to the families on the other side … we left welcomed, and it was so important to them, for us to be involved.' Ross says he's not convinced by the argument that men like his uncle Bill were 'of their time'. 'These people did not live by the standards of their time either,' he says. 'The actions at Uluru were not a one-off. They were known for being cruel. They knew what they were doing was wrong.' McKenna says facing the truth of colonisation means understanding it still having real effects on Aboriginal people today. 'It's not something that's in the distant colonial past. It's not something that is separated from us by time or by flesh or by country. It's present now, and I think that's still something that non-Indigenous Australians struggle to understand.' In the case of Yukun, it led to his remains finally being found and laid to rest. McKenna recalls looking at the 'shelves and shelves of boxes' of Indigenous human remains 'which literally tower over you' at the South Australian Museum. 'To see Yukun's remains [there] and then to watch them come back to country, and see hundreds of people gathered there at Mutitjulu – it's not history,' he says. 'It's understanding that First Nations people have to live with this today, the consequences of colonisation and the consequences of all of the racist policies that have been mounted against them over the years.' Councillor says Aboriginal people are waiting for others to put down their 'comfortable untruth' and reckon with what happened. 'Answer that blood properly,' she says. 'Give my ancestors that time, that place, that voice that needs to be. You can't just brush over a quick sorry and then it's finished. It's just the beginning of a reconciliation.' Indigenous Australians can call 13YARN on 13 92 76 for information and crisis support; or call Lifeline on 13 11 14, Mensline on 1300 789 978 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636 Lorena Allam is a professor at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous research at the University of Technology Sydney

Our benefits street is like a slum… people flog sex at all hours & I strung up wall of dead rats to deter druggies
Our benefits street is like a slum… people flog sex at all hours & I strung up wall of dead rats to deter druggies

The Sun

time10 hours ago

  • The Sun

Our benefits street is like a slum… people flog sex at all hours & I strung up wall of dead rats to deter druggies

DODGING a squashed rat, a young man and woman race each other on mobility scooters, while the distinctive smell of weed momentarily interrupts the putrid stench of decaying rubbish. Meanwhile mountains of black bin liners are strewn across streets, many of which spew their contents onto the pavements, while piles of mattresses, fridge freezers and sofas congregate in back alleys. 17 17 17 This is Eastwood, an area of Rotherham in South Yorkshire branded 'lawless' by desperate locals, some of whom claim it's become a total no-go area at night due to escalating issues with anti-social behaviour, drugs and loud parties. The problem is so bad that a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) issued by the council in 2019 has now been extended to 2028 - with demands that residents refrain from street drinking and partying until the small hours, dumping rubbish on the streets, and bring in their wheelie bins to curb the ever-expanding rodent population. Locals say they have been battling for months to keep the vermin under control - with one desperate man stringing up a line of 20 carcasses on a fence to show the council the harrowing extent of the problem. Father-of-two Andrew Wilshaw, 45, tells The Sun when we visit: 'This used to be a great area but in the past 10 years it has gone downhill before my eyes. 'I am doing my best to help it. We didn't have much but we had standards. Now it's more like a third world country.' The main streets covered by the PSPO are Fitwilliam Road, the Doncaster Road corridor, Eldon Road and the stretch up to the Mushroom roundabout. South Yorkshire Police records showed anti-social behaviour incidents in the area had "increased steadily" since the order was last renewed, with 568 reports between 2021-2024. A total of 60 Fixed Penalty Notices have been issued since the order was introduced in 2019 - though we witnessed several violations on our visit alone. Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council does try to keep up with demand by making clear-up trips six days a week - but still the rubbish piles up. Andrew, who works in security, now patrols the area every Monday morning taking photos documenting the damage from the weekend in an attempt to help clean up his community. I live in UK's saddest council estate with 'carpet' of 800 vodka bottles… it makes Shameless look like The Borrowers He set up the Facebook group How Clean in Eastwood, which has 800 members. Andrew - who took us around the areas in our car fearing we'd be a target if we walked around with expensive camera equipment - says: 'I started posting the sights and rubbish I saw on my own Facebook page but it blew up, so I set up the dedicated page around a year ago. 'The idea is that we shame the council into action, because the PSPOs they have in place do nothing. 'A lot of people will get me to post their photos for them because they're too scared of reprisals to do it themselves. 'All the people who used to care have had enough and moved out. Most of those left living in this mayhem are the elderly. It's awful. 'I moved in with my ill parents a bit further up the road around 10 years ago and managed to sell my house in the thick of the problem area. 'I thank God that happened because I wouldn't get anything for it now.' 'Wall of Rats' 17 17 17 Petty crime and the brazen dumping of rubbish - which is fuelling a surging population of rodents - is blighting the lives of many Eastwood residents we speak to. Granddad-of-11 Dave Russell, 74, created a 'Wall of Rats' with some of his kills. He explains: 'The rats used to be lined all across but the birds have been eating them. 'I did it to show the council how bad it is for us. This is what we live with. 'It also stops the local druggies coming here and using it as a place to hang about. 'My garden fence is topped with barbed wire to stop burglars after our shed was broken into a few years back. We also have CCTV. The rats used to be lined all across but the birds have been eating them. I did it to show the council how bad it is for us. This is what we live with Dave Russell 'You can't have your back door open for fear you'll get a rat in your house. You see them darting across your garden all the time. 'I catch three or four every day. I used to leave live traps and then kill them by drowning them - the snapper traps leave a bit of a mess. 'I have started laying down poison, it's £9 for a pack of 20 - in the past three months I've used two tubs. But still we have so many, it does nothing to keep the numbers down. 'Nobody should have to live like this, we are constantly bleaching and cleaning because rats are full of disease.' Father-of-one Mohammed Khan, 34, has had to replace his Mitsubishi Outlander 4x4 car three times after rats got inside and chewed wires. He says: 'They're rampant. I'd say I've spent around £25- £30,000 on cars over the last couple of years. 'Once they've got in and eaten the foam that's it, your car is done for. 'I spend around £80 a month on pest control to try and make my garden safe for my child but really you can't let your kid play outside in this. 'It's far too dangerous. Even if you don't see a rat, there is poo left behind.' 'Lawless' 17 17 17 17 Resident Kaz Gunn, 55, refuses to move from the estate even though she's had to get her door replaced twice from thugs constantly bashing it. Kaz, who suffers with osteoporosis, says: 'I always speak out and take photos of people throwing rubbish, but then I make myself a target. 'Anybody who passes my door will always make sure to give it a good thud on their way by. It's quite alarming and I am scared, but I refuse to budge. 'I may be small and skinny but I won't take any crap. 'To make it even worse the whole place floods when we get plenty of rain because the drains are all blocked. 'We are living in a hellhole. It's lawless, the number of rats is immense, the streets are covered with them at night, and the parties that go on until 6am on a weekend are a nightmare. We are living in a hellhole. It's lawless, the number of rats is immense, the streets are covered with them at night, and the parties that go on until 6am on a weekend are a nightmare Kaz Gunn 'The noise here is awful. We get noise abatement people out to take measurements every so often but nothing is ever done about it. 'It's also mobility scooter central. I'd love to have a mobility scooter but can't get one for love nor money, but loads of people have them round here.' Kaz points out a woman zipping by holding a bag of shopping in one hand while gripping the handlebar and a phone pressed to her ear in her other. 'She's not disabled,' Kaz says. 'She's a mum-of-two who lives over there. 'You also get people coming to your door trying to sell you stuff. I've had somebody try and sell my cat to me before, then a fella started breeding kittens to get money so now you see more cats than ever. 'Another fella was trying to sell a wheelie bin which he'd obviously nicked from somebody else's house. 'As much as I'm terrified, I also have a lot of friends here who look out for me. I have CCTV to protect me.' 'Heartbreaking' 17 17 Bar the odd corner shop and a new play park for kids, there is not much to do in the PSPO catchment, with cafes and pubs long gone. Despite it being the school summer holidays, the streets are void of children playing. Though pushchairs are a regular feature outside the dishevelled terraced houses, Andrew tells us they are primarily used to transport waste. 'You see so many prams outside the houses - they look innocent enough but they're actually for the people to pile high with rubbish and take it to be dumped. It's crazy,' he says. 'There are a couple of fellas around here who have vans and operate as the local skip. They take loads of rubbish and dump it. 'We know who these people are yet nothing is done. 'Somebody set fire to some rubbish piled outside an old fella's home just last week and it killed all 90 of his pigeons. Somebody set fire to some rubbish piled outside an old fella's home just last week and it killed all 90 of his pigeons Andrew Wilshaw 'And you certainly can't have anything in your garden or it will get nicked. It's heartbreaking. 'Every so often there will be a power cut because of all the power being used to grow cannabis in some houses. "It's not fair because Eastwood was already a working class area and we've now become a dumping ground for people and rubbish. 'Sometimes I wonder why I keep doing this but then somebody in their 80s will come to me with concerns and fears, and I keep going.' He adds: 'It's not great to walk around here during the day but you'd be insane to come here at night. 'Each night there will be around 40 Slovakian Roma people drinking in the park. 'The council stupidly put around a dozen benches there so it makes the problem worse, and even the police don't come here. If they did there'd be hell. 'You get accosted at all hours by people asking, 'Do you want anything?' This can be drugs or sex.' 'Getting worse' 17 17 17 17 Eastwood is a melting pot of ethnicities, with a big Asian population who migrated in the 70s, and a large Slovakian Roma population that has increased over the past decade. Thirty-five languages are spoken at Eastwood's St Ann's Primary school. One Roma mum-of-four, 36, who did not wish to be named, tells us: 'We are always to blame for all the rubbish but people come from outside in big vans and dump it. It is not us. 'I do not see so much wrong with all being out together in the street. We like to be together.' Another resident who did not wish to be named says: 'It is easy to put some of the blame onto the Roma families but the real problem is the landlords. 'The homeowners who moved out are now the landlords and they allow their tenants to do what they want and let them live in horrendous conditions.' Private landlords in Eastwood have to comply with Selective Licensing, a scheme put in place from 2020 to 2025 to make sure landlords maintain certain conditions and are subject to council checks. It is waiting to be renewed. 'On paper Selective Licensing and PSPOs are wonderful, but if nobody is enforcing them then they're not going to work,' the man continued. 'Something should have been done about Eastwood a long time ago. Instead it has been left to rack and ruin and it's getting worse. 'Private landlords hand over their properties with not so much as a tenancy agreement. 'Everybody here is on benefits. Apparently many houses have their meters rigged up for gas and electricity and nobody bats an eyelid. 'The amount of nice cars around here when nobody is working is phenomenal. They're all mobility cars. ' Drinking in the street is a major problem, and people chucking their furniture into the street is standard. 'But if you ring the council, they say you need to ring the police, and they tell you to ring the council, and you go round in circles. 'It's intolerable. We shouldn't be living like this. These are 100-year-old terraces and the best thing for them would be to knock them all down.' 'Eastwood deserves better' Rotherham Council's Assistant Director of Regeneration and Environment, Sam Barstow, tells The Sun: 'We are committed to keeping the borough clean and welcoming. 'The waste team visit Eastwood on weekdays to clear all the litter bins and general waste. 'Additionally, a weekend team carry out bin clearance and attend to any fly-tipping, making a total of six visits. 'If we have reports of flytipping of larger items like mattresses or fridge freezers, we make additional visits, which is currently averaging around four occasions per week. 'Between April 2024 and June 2025, we have issued 164 flytipping warning letters and took enforcement action over 21 flytipping cases in Eastwood. 'We also issued 291 written Community Protections Warnings, leading to 56 Community Protection Notices for unremoved waste in gardens. 'During the same period, 888 littering tickets were issued in the area. "Since 2023 the Council has received 325 complaints about noise in Eastwood which has resulted in 316 enforcement actions. Every case is investigated, and action is taken where evidence allows. 'By engaging with the community through targeted mailouts to promote responsible waste disposal, we're working together to reduce waste and make a lasting, positive impact on the environment we all share. 'Concerns about rats or rubbish, or anti-social behaviour relating to a domestic property should be reported to the council. 'Where the anti-social behaviour relates to problems associated with activities on the street, such as drinking and gatherings of groups, then the Police should be contacted.' Labour Cllr of Rotherham East, Angham Ahmed, says:"Eastwood continues to face a number of ongoing challenges, and we understand that many residents are increasingly frustrated by persistent issues such as fly-tipping and anti-social behaviour, often caused by a small minority of individuals. "These actions not only damage the environment but also undermine the pride that so many of us take in our community. "We are working closely with the local council, police, and community partners to keep Eastwood safe and clean. This includes daily street cleaning, CCTV monitoring, and taking firm enforcement action -including fines - against those who break the rules. "The introduction of the Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) has made it clearer what is and isn't acceptable in our shared public spaces, giving authorities more power to respond when those standards are ignored. "We also recognise that some residents, particularly those who have more recently arrived in the UK, may not yet be familiar with local expectations. That's why we continue to work with local community groups to support integration, raise awareness, and help everyone feel part of the community. "Ultimately, we expect all residents, regardless of background, to take responsibility and do their bit to help maintain a safe, respectful and welcoming neighbourhood. "As a local resident myself, I witness these challenges firsthand and understand the strength of feeling across our community. Eastwood deserves better, and we are committed to working together to create a cleaner, safer, and more respectful place for all who live here." The Sun has reached out to South Yorkshire Police for comment.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store