One person dead after fight outside Mernda railway station
Updated ,first published
Four teenagers have been arrested following the death of a man following a fight outside Mernda train station in Melbourne’s northeast.
Police were called to the incident on Bridge Inn Road at around 5.50pm on Friday after passers-by reported men or groups of men fighting.
They found a 22-year-old man, unconscious, with serious injuries, and paramedics tried to resuscitate him. However, he died at the scene.
Homicide detectives headed to Mernda on Friday evening. Police said that the investigation into the incident was ongoing, but four men, one 16 years old, one 18 years old and two 17 years old, were arrested.
Bridge Inn Road is based on the train station car park opposite two early learning centres.
Novice Nest Early Learning and Kindergarten owner Sukhdeep Kaur said that luckily her center was not operating during normal hours on Friday, otherwise the event would have coincided with parents picking up their children.
Kaur said children often had to sit on the bench with a full view of the station car park for several minutes while their parents picked up their cars.
“If they [saw] “They encountered something or something happened outside of childcare… you can’t recover from that kind of trauma,” he said, adding: “It’s a terrible thing.”
A resident of the nearby Ehipassiko Buddhist monastery, who wished to remain anonymous, said he saw police and State Emergency Service teams setting up tents as he passed the scene.
He assumed what happened was an accident before discovering that the police were investigating the incident as a murder. “Shocking news,” he said.
Ashley, who lives within meters of the station and asked that her last name not be published, said it had become unsafe to even send her teenage daughter to local shops.
His family was at home during the fight, but heard sirens.
“It’s so sad, kids can’t be kids,” he said. “We’ve been trying to encourage kids to put down devices and play outside, but now [they] I can’t do that either.”
Police asked Metro Trains to stop services between Mernda and South Morang at around 8pm, two hours after the incident. Trains were replaced by buses with a delay of more than an hour.
Victoria Police has urged anyone who witnessed the incident to come forward.
The Allan government in November scrapped the Baillieu-era policy of an overnight duty at every train station on the commuter network to accommodate protective service officers patrolling Melbourne’s shopping centres.
Instead, PSOs are present at 32 stations from 9 a.m. until the last service, and another 72 stations have officers on duty from 6 p.m. until the last train. In the remaining 120 “low crime” stations, officers work in mobile groups, with each team moving between six stations.
A police spokesman confirmed on Friday that PSOs would patrol Mernda railway station from 6pm.
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